Ticket to Ride
by Frankyy
Summary: The reckless reactions of Curly and his friends results in a dead body and Brumly out for Shepard blood. Difficult choices and bad decisions will be made as the feud between the gangs reaches a boiling point when Curly involves himself with the younger sister of Brumly's leader.
1. Man Down

**Author's Note:** Some of you may or may not remember this fic from several years ago posted under my previous username of xxmuchluvinxx, which has been changed due to reasons that are probably very obvious lol. While the storyline for this fic will be similar to the original, quite a few large chunks of it have been changed and the whole thing has been rewritten so it will likely be very different to the version posted back in '09.

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from Rihanna's song, Man Down. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 ** _Sunday, 8 December 1968_**

 _I can't even sleep at night_

 _Can't get it off my mind_

"He's gotta be here," Arnie Barnes told Curly Shepard and Glenn Abbott as he turned his car off of the Ribbon and into the parking lot of The Dingo to slowly cruise through the aisles of parked cars. It was early on a Sunday afternoon so naturally The Dingo was packed to the brim, but it didn't take long for the three boys to find the blue Ford belonging to none other than Mike Harvey. The boys should have known better, and a part of them all did. They all knew, deep down and at the back of their minds, that they should have been looking for Tim Shepard rather than Mike Harvey. Tim would know how to handle the situation correctly, and hunting down the leader of the Brumly Gang's right hand man was something close to the exact opposite of the right way to handle things. But all three of the boys were too drunk to think straight and the only thing on their minds was doling out some sweet payback...

 _What started out as a simple altercation_

 _Turned into a real sticky situation_

That morning had started off like any other Sunday morning had before Arnie had gotten himself thrown into the reformatory. He had woken up in a strange bed in a strange room, but next to a girl he had been just about bursting to see when he had been released the morning prior. Who would have thought that after a shotgun wedding, finding out it was all for nothing, and picking a nasty fight with a cop that Arnie would miss Angela fucking Shepard, of all people? The only possible explanation was that he had been surrounded by males for too long, that it wasn't Angela specifically he missed, but more the touch of a female in general.

He left Angela sleeping to head downstairs in search of something to chase away the nauseous feeling growing in his stomach, and found Curly and a couple of the other guys from the gang sitting at a table downstairs. He grunted a hello as he filled one of the vacant seats and didn't miss the look Dale Roberts gave Glenn Abbott during the short silence that followed.

"What?" Curly demanded, beating Arnie to the punch.

"Huh?" Dale responded, glancing at Curly and then back to Glenn, alarmed.

"There's somethin' you gotta say," Curly accused. Dale and Glenn had been acting a bit off since Curly had woken up and started drinking with them again about an hour ago and he was sick of the awkward little looks they kept giving each other and not being in on what they meant. "Say it."

Glenn sighed. "Don't shoot the messenger, man," he said as he grabbed at the bottle of whiskey sitting on the table and began pouring more shots, "but we heard some shit last night that you guys and Tim might wanna take care of." Curly darkened and Arnie tensed as Glenn glanced at Dale again and Dale, seemingly relieved at not having to be the one to deliver the news, shrugged nonchalantly and leaned back in his seat. "Craig Chambers, y'know, from the Tigers? He thought you and Angel had called it quits," Glenn explained to Arnie, "since she'd gone round with Mike Harvey last weekend."

There was a long pause. Dale looked at Arnie, then Curly, then decided that watching Buck grab a beer from the fridge and pass it to some guy at the bar was far more interesting than the current topic of conversation. Glenn slid two full shots toward Curly and Arnie. Both boys took their shots together and exhaled sharply, a bitter taste on their lips and in their throats.

"You wanna jump him?" Curly asked, turning to Arnie immediately.

"I want another shot," Arnie answered, sliding his shot glass back to Glenn who promptly refilled it and slid it back.

"Might wanna make sure it's true before stirring up shit," Glenn said as Arnie took his second shot. "For all we know it could be another Tiger runnin' his mouth."

"Yeah, and they'd love to see us at Brumly's throats, anything for a bit of entertainment," Dale pointed out reluctantly. It was a good point, but one that fell on ears that were either too drunk or too caught up in comprehending that his girl had slept around while he'd been locked up. It shouldn't have surprised Arnie, and really, it almost didn't. Angela had always been like that, and Arnie had clearly been foolish to think for a second that the ring she now wore on her finger meant any kind of loyalty. "And anyway, you should be talkin' to Tim before you go doin' anything," Dale added, crossing his arms and looking displeased, probably because he knew they wouldn't take his advice and he would have to be the one telling Tim what had happened.

"Have another two ready when I get back," Arnie ordered, slamming his shot back down onto the table and standing up so quickly he almost knocked his chair to the ground before heading back up the stairs he had only just come down.

He barged into the room he'd left Angela in and found her sitting on the bed, leaning down to slip on her shoes. "You screw around on me while I was inside?" He asked, towering over her.

Angela blinked up at him. "Course not," she said sweetly.

"So the Tiger sayin' you screwed Mike Harvey last weekend is a liar, is he?"

"Not up to me to say what he is and isn't." Angela flipped her hair over her shoulder and Arnie lunged forward, grabbing her by her upper arms and leaning down close to her face.

"I ain't kiddin', Angel," he said, his tone low and dangerous as he dug his fingers far enough into her arms for her to wince.

"He got me drunk," she said, glaring back up at Arnie. "It wasn't my fault." And for extra effect, as if she needed anything else to guarantee she'd be off the hook, she threw in, "I didn't want to," and that was all Arnie needed.

Had he been calmer, or had he not just started to feel the hum of alcohol throbbing through his blood, he probably would have doubted the credibility of her story, but instead he was livid, and what she had said was all he needed to go looking for trouble.

He stormed back downstairs red faced and when he tipped the shot of whiskey, and then another, down his throat he revelled in the way it burnt.

"I'm goin' to find him," Arnie said, slamming the second shot glass back down on the table, snatching up the whiskey bottle, and turning for the door. Curly and Glenn were up and following him a beat later, leaving Dale to explain to their ghosts why it really was best to involve Tim in this.

 _If you're playing me for a fool_

 _I will lose my cool_

 _And reach for my fire arm_

"Are you sure you don't wanna wait for Tim at least?" Glenn asked for what seemed like the hundredth time during their search around town, which had only really consisted of stopping in at a few of the common greaser hangouts and sipping far too much whiskey than should be sipped whilst driving.

They were climbing out of Arnie's car and Curly could feel his heart beating hard against his chest in anticipation. Curly didn't care to know the number of boys that had messed around with his sister, he even chose to turn a blind eye to it sometimes, but he did care to know when somebody had _really_ screwed with his sister, and Mike Harvey had done just that.

As the three boys neared the large entrance doors to The Dingo, Curly, despite the spinning of his vision and the large number of people milling about out the front, spotted Mike and made a beeline for him. Glenn and Arnie caught on a couple of seconds later and followed. Mike's back was to Curly as he chatted away to a smaller blonde girl, one he vaguely recognised as Rick Thomas' little sister, Katie, which gave Curly more than enough of an element of surprise. He swung his right fist when he was close enough and was satisfied with the loud sound it made when it came in contact with Mike's right cheekbone. Katie let out a shocked scream as Mike stumbled to the left and spun around to face Curly, all the while struggling to keep his footing.

Curly only had a second of disappointment that such a great hit hadn't knocked Mike straight to the ground before Rick Thomas pushed his way through the crowd, tucking his sister behind him whilst yelling "What the fuck was that for?" at Curly.

Curly opened his mouth to tell him exactly what it was for when he saw something behind him take Rick's attention, wide eyes and a gaping mouth.

"He got my wife drunk," Arnie shouted as Curly turned to find his best buddy, who he'd only just gotten back after three months away, holding a gun he hadn't even known he had, and it was aimed right at Mike, "and took advantage, the sick fuck."

Mike spat blood at the ground and Curly was momentarily triumphant. "She ain't no saint," he said and Curly made to go at him again, but was stopped by a hand grabbing at the collar of his shirt.

It was Rick's and Curly almost rounded on him with his fists, too, but stopped short when he saw Rick wasn't even paying any attention to him. His eyes were trained steady on Arnie and the hand that wasn't holding tightly onto Curly's collar was held out toward Arnie in a stop motion. The air, though as chilly as to be expected for early December, was thick with tension and Curly seemed to realise all at once in his drunken daze what the small group of hoods still gathered around had realised moments before; Arnie was ready to use that gun. He didn't know how he had missed it before, missed the slightly crazed look in Arnie's eyes, because now it was clear as day. His friend had lost his fucking mind.

Curly lunged at Arnie as the gun fired and he knew even before he ripped himself out of Rick's grasp and before his body collided with Arnie's and tackled him to the ground that he was too late. He was too drunk; he hadn't noticed what he should have noticed earlier. He had seen his friend with a gun in his hands and immediately thought it was just for show, not for actual use.

The two boys hit the ground hard and Curly let Arnie wrestle out of his hold, too transfixed by the amount of blood pooled around where Mike had fallen to the ground motionless. All he could hear as he got to his feet was the ringing in his ears as he looked around for where Arnie had run off to, but couldn't see him anywhere – the only face he recognised was Glenn's, who looked about as disoriented as Curly felt. The small crowd that had been gathered around had brought more people out of The Dingo, and beyond the ringing in his ears he could hear the din of yelling from the blurred faces around him and the sound of sirens in the distance. And then hands were on his shoulders, spinning him around to face someone.

Tim was in his face, looking him right in the eyes, yelling. "Are you alright?" Muffled, but Curly heard him. "Are you hurt?" Tim yelled, eyes raking in the rest of him, when Curly didn't respond. His fingers crushed Curly's shoulders and that seemed to wake him up. He shook his head and glanced back at where Mike had been standing. He couldn't see him through all the people, but noticed Rick Thomas was pulling himself back from the group and pulling his sister with him.

Tim stepped forward ahead of Curly as Rick turned and glared at him. "I'm gonna make you," Rick started, coming to stand in front of Tim and pointing an accusatory finger at Curly, "and every one of your boys wish they'd never been born." The sound of police sirens rang louder as they made their way down the Ribbon toward The Dingo. Rick and Tim both glanced over at the street as the first one sped into the parking lot. "That's a promise, Shepard." He turned and took off for his car, Katie stumbling behind him. Curly didn't miss the flecks of blood that marred her face, nor the way Rick's shirt dripped with it, and for a moment he thought he might hurl.

Tim spat at the ground Rick had just vacated, his eyebrows drawn together in a deadly scowl. "Pete's here somewhere, go find him," Tim ordered, turning to Curly. Any other time Curly would have been pissed about being told to go find Tim's right hand man, purely because Tim's right hand man wasn't him, but right then he didn't want any part of it. As usual his reckless behaviour had gotten them all into trouble, and he didn't want to stick around and listen to Tim tell him so.

 _I didn't mean to lay him down_

 _But it's too late to turn back now_

 _Don't know what I was thinking_

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Reviews would make my day, really! And if any of you have some concrit, please feel free to give it - if there's something I can improve, I'd like to know about it :)


	2. Don't Dream It's Over

**Author's Note:** So here is chapter two, and before you start reading I just wanted to say a big thank you to the fifty odd visitors that read the first chapter and to the three that also left a review. In response to Gigi's anonymous review; thank you, and kudos for remembering the titles of my other two fics all these years later! Your review made me smile (:

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from Crowded House's song, Don't Dream It's Over. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 _ **Sunday, 8 December 1968**_

 _There is freedom within_

 _There is freedom without_

 _Try to catch a deluge in a paper cup_

"What the fuck was he thinking?!" Tim exclaimed as he paced the length of Pete Brady's small living room, which held all of the Shepard gang members but one. "No," he corrected himself, turning and stabbing his finger through the air at Curly and Glenn, "what the fuck were _you_ thinking?"

Curly scowled and Glenn shook his head. "We weren't," Glenn answered contritely.

"Obviously," Curly muttered.

"Yeah, obviously," Tim agreed, smoothing back his greasy hair. "Christ, you boys never use your fuckin' brains and now you've gone and fucked up what little peace we still held with those pricks!"

"You never liked 'em anyway," Curly shrugged, hating that he couldn't just let Tim be right.

He couldn't help himself, there was just something about the way that Tim pressed his authority on people, especially on Curly, that ground his gears and urged him to push back. Curly _got it_ , he realized he was a fuck up without help from anybody else, much less Tim ranting and raving about how brainless he was in front of all the other guys.

"That doesn't matter, Curly," Tim shouted slowly so as to articulate his words very clearly in case Curly truly did have an intellectual impediment. "Arnie gunned down Thomas' best buddy, you think Brumly's gonna understand it was a personal issue and not a gang one? They're gonna be trying to fuck us up every chance they get now!"

Curly opened his mouth to respond as Tim turned his gaze to the pack of cigarettes sitting on the coffee table, but Glenn kicked his ankle and gave him a glare that reminded Curly to think twice before speaking. He closed his mouth again as Tim pulled a cigarette from the pack and lit up. About a minute of expectant silence passed as Tim smoked, clearly in thought, and the guys gathered there silently dared one another to ask Tim what the plan was.

"So," Tim finally said without prompt, exhaling a long chain of smoke, "Arnie got himself busted takin' off up the Ribbon." He spoke calmly now, and shook his head with the tiniest trace of a smirk, "Didn't even think to ditch the gun. Dumb as fuckin' doornails." He sucked in another drag of smoke and then blew it out. "I want you boys layin' low for now. No gettin' pissed the moment you roll outta bed," he shot a nasty glare in Curly and Glenn's direction, "and stay well away from Brumly turf. Don't go runnin' your mouths, but don't go actin' like little bitches, either. You make sure people know Mike Harvey got what was comin' to him for messin' with Angela." Tim looked at the group of guys, "Understood?" There was a chorus of _yeah_ s and nods before Tim dismissed the meeting altogether.

"You're comin' with me, kid," Tim said when Curly made to get up and follow Glenn out onto the front porch. Glenn shrugged and shot Curly an apologetic look before catching up to Dale and following the rest of the guys out of the house. Tim finished up a quiet conversation with Pete and started out of the house, barking _car_ at Curly as he passed him.

Curly followed him out, nodded his goodbye to a few of the guys that were still hanging around, and climbed into the passenger seat of Tim's car. They made it halfway home in silence before Tim started in on Curly again.

"I don't understand what the hell goes through your head, kid, and maybe it's just freakin' static up there," Tim said steadily, though the white knuckles of his fingers wrapped around the steering wheel suggested he was anything but calm, "but you gotta start using it or you ain't gonna have a place in this gang much longer."

Curly had to resist flinching like he had been slapped. "I wasn't the only one involved today, y'know," he responded, scowling out the window.

"You ain't, but the only time Glenn's in trouble is when you put him there, and Arnie's a whole 'nother case I can't even get into right now," Tim said, gritting his teeth and turning the car a bit too abruptly to park it in their driveway. He killed the engine and turned to Curly, "You must have a load of homework since you never do any. Get upstairs and educate yourself."

Curly glared at his brother one last time before jumping out of the car and storming up the driveway and into the house. On his way to the stairs, Curly spotted Angela rummaging through the medicine box in the kitchen and couldn't stop himself from throwing a scathing comment her way.

"Your bullshit drama killed someone today, you know that?" he spat at her as he stood at the bottom of the staircase.

Angela looked up from the medicine box, a snappy retort sitting on her tongue, but she hesitated as though she didn't have a clue what Curly was talking about. Her gaze shifted from Curly to something behind him and he knew without even looking that Tim had just walked in behind him. He took that as his cue to continue upstairs, but when he reached the top he stopped to listen in.

"What's he on about?" he heard Angela ask and there was a long silence before Tim finally acknowledged that she had even spoken.

"Did Mike Harvey really mess with you the way you told Arnie he did?"

Another long pause.

"I'm not a liar," Angela responded, though the length of time it took her to answer the question was more than enough to confirm to Curly, and probably Tim, too, that she was being anything but truthful.

"Well you better stick to that story 'cause it got Mike killed and Arnie locked up today."

"What?!" Angela shrieked and Curly felt a bit of grim satisfaction rise up inside of him. "He only just got out!"

"And now he's goin' back in," Tim responded, "and he ain't gonna be back for a long time." Curly heard the sound of heavy footsteps and headed into his bedroom as they started to climb the staircase. "Oh and if you're lookin' for the aspirin, I used the last of them yesterday morning," were the last words Curly heard before closing his bedroom door behind him. No amount of sound-proofing could ever block out the almighty screech that followed, though.

 _There's a battle ahead_

 _Many battles are lost_

 _But you'll never see the end of the road_

"Katie!" Rick Thomas shouted as he banged on his little sister's bedroom door. "Get up; I'm taking you to school."

Katie, who had already been awake for an hour or so, continued to stare up at the light on the roof above her bed. It was Thursday and she hadn't been to school all week. She knew her chances of Rick letting her stay in bed were falling the further the week progressed, but she figured she would try him anyway since all that required was not making any effort to get out of bed.

She didn't even know why she didn't have the energy to get up, or why she would choose to stay in bed when that usually led to her falling asleep, which usually led to vivid dreams she would rather not have. Perhaps it was easier to face Mike's lifeless, bloody body in her dreams than to face the people at school. Susan Armstrong had been inside The Dingo when Mike had been shot, and if the number of times she had called and asked to speak to Katie since Sunday were anything to go by, she was worried about her friend. Katie didn't want to be fussed over, though, which Susan was sure to do, and she knew that prolonging the inevitable would likely only make the fussing worse, but again, it was easier than biting the bullet and just dealing with it.

Not to mention that going to school would mean facing some of the Shepard boys, most of whom she and Susan shared classes with and one of whom Susan had been dating for the last couple of months.

They had always gotten along well enough with one another. Up until now Katie had been free to be friends and to associate with whomever she liked since girls, for the most part, weren't involved in gang issues, but that was before a Shepard boy had shot her brother's best friend. Rick hadn't said anything to her about it – actually, he hadn't really said anything besides yelling at her to get ready for school -, but would he expect her to stop talking to, hanging out with, or even associating with the Shepard boys she had gone to school with most of her life? Would it even be an issue for her? She honestly had no idea how she would react when confronted with a Shepard, and the uncertainty of it all scared her more than she was willing to admit.

"Katie!" Another bang at the door and a pause before, "Katie, I'm serious now. Get ready for school!"

"Here, let me try," Katie heard her mom say from the other side of the door before it cracked open just enough for Katie's small mom to slip into the room and close the door behind her. "Honey?" Shirley Thomas cooed as she approached Katie's bed and sat down on the end of it.

This was the third time Katie had seen her in the past week and she was dressed for work at the supermarket, where she would be until she had to leave to go to her night job at a diner downtown.

Shirley smoothed Katie's blanket over her feet and sighed. "You've got to go to school, Katie. You don't wanna be working two sucky jobs the rest of your life like your ma, do ya?" she grinned, and when she didn't get a response from Katie, she let the grin slide and sighed again. "You've only got the rest of this week and next to go 'til the break, you can suck it up and deal with seven more days of school before crawling back into bed, okay? If not to make yourself feel better, which it _will_ , then at least do it to make me feel better." Katie looked away from the light on her roof to her mom. It suddenly struck her how pretty her mom must have been when she was younger, before the worry lines etched their way into her skin.

Shirley glanced at the tatty old watch on her wrist. "I've gotta go," she said, leaning forward and placing a quick kiss on Katie's forehead. "Go to school, please."

She disappeared behind Katie's bedroom door a moment later and when Rick bashed on her door again a couple of minutes after, Katie was pulling a sweater over her head and trying to remember where in her messy bedroom she had kicked her shoes off.

 _They come, they come_

 _To build a wall between us_

 _We know they won't win_

Rick pulled his car to a stop in one of the parking bays in the lot of Will Rogers High School and turned to look at his younger sister, resting an arm along the top of the bench seat behind her. "Stick by our boys, alright," he said. "Any trouble, you tell them."

Katie held her brother's gaze for a couple of moments before nodding and glancing around at the groups of people hanging out in the parking lot waiting for the first bell to ring. She could see two of the boys Rick had been referring to, Bradley Simons and Jeff Griffiths, heading toward Rick's car having already noticed him pulling into the parking lot. "There won't be any trouble," Katie said, more confident than she felt. "I'm not involved in any of what they obviously want to talk to you about."

Her eyes found Susan standing and chatting with a girl from their English class closer to the school entrance. She quickly muttered a goodbye and left Rick to discuss the elephant in the room with his boys. Susan spotted Katie before Katie was even out of the parking lot and it looked like she gave a hasty apology to the girl she was talking to before taking off toward Katie.

"I didn't know if you were ever coming back!" Susan half laughed, giving Katie a quick hug and pulling back to look her up and down. "How're you doing? I didn't even see you leave The Dingo on Sunday, everything was so crazy, and then you didn't turn up here on Monday... You had me worried."

Katie forced a smile. "I'm fine," she said and Susan looked like she didn't believe her at all.

"Are you sure?" she looked around, "We can go somewhere and talk if you want."

"No," Katie shook her head, "it's fine. We should probably start heading to class anyway."

The bell wasn't due to ring for another ten minutes, but they had Maths up first and their teacher always jumped at the chance to dole out detentions for tardiness.

Susan pursed her lips and gave Katie another concerned look before dropping the matter, for now. "Okay, I just have to stop by Dale's locker and get my textbook off him," she babbled as the two girls headed for the school building, "I must've told myself a hundred times not to forget about it, but I still managed to leave it there last night."

Katie gulped dryly as they stepped inside the school and walked toward the left side of the main hall that housed Dale's and majority of the seniors' lockers. Dale leant up against his locker lazily, his back to the two girls, and was talking to two people she had hoped she could just avoid for the next week and a bit until school let out for the winter break. She knew it was an unrealistic plan since she shared several classes with the few members of the Shepard gang that were in her grade, but she didn't have any other ideas of how to deal with the Shepards up her sleeves. She stopped dead in her tracks, grabbing Susan's arm and halting her, too.

"I think I'll just meet you in class," she said, trying not to look to see if Glenn or Curly had noticed her, but failing anyway.

Susan followed her line of sight and nodded, eyebrows furrowed at Katie as the same concern from just earlier filled her pretty features again. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," Katie nodded and the two girls parted ways, Susan toward Dale, Glenn and Curly and Katie toward their Math class. She still had to pass the boys, but passing them wasn't nearly as difficult as the prospect of standing with them and talking to them. At least when she heard Dale call out, "How's it goin', Brumly!" they were already behind her and she could pretend she hadn't heard him.

The rest of the school day was uneventful. Susan must have picked up on Katie's reluctance to be around the Shepard boys because she didn't mention wanting to see Dale during lunch like she normally did and in the afternoon classes they all shared the only time Susan turned around to talk to the boys was to tell Dale to knock it off when he kept hissing _Brumly_ at Katie, trying to get a rise out of her.

"Katie!" Bradley Simons called out to her as Katie approached the parking lot with Susan after their last class that day. Katie grinned and headed over to him with Susan in tow.

"I just realized I didn't have a clue how I was getting home," Katie said when she was within earshot, "but I guess if Rick's not here then you've got it covered, right?"

"Yeah, I meant to tell ya this morning in economics," he grinned sheepishly at her, "my memory ain't that great."

"Well you didn't leave me stranded so it can't be too bad," Katie teased as Jeff Griffiths pushed himself up from where he had been sitting on the hood of Bradley's car.

"You comin' with us," Jeff asked, blowing out a cloud of smoke from his cigarette as he spoke to Susan, "or you waitin' for your little boyfriend?" Going by his bruised cheek and the amount of animosity in Jeff's tone, Katie figured she must've missed something on one of the days she had spent in bed and not school. She could have put money on it having something to do with Dale and that something being a fight.

Susan laughed nastily, "You must be _looking_ for matching cheeks."

Jeff smirked at Susan and looked her up and down. "That ain't answering my question, is it?"

Susan scoffed and gave him a dirty look before turning to Katie, "I'll see you later," she said, giving Katie an apologetic look before taking off.

"You get into it with Dale while I was off?" Katie asked Jeff as she watched Susan greet Dale on the other side of the parking lot. It was clear Dale had seen the direction Susan had come from and he didn't look happy about it.

"It was nothin'," Jeff said, watching Dale and Susan argue, "only got in a couple punches before the teachers broke it up." Dale got in the backseat of Glenn's car and Susan followed suit while Glenn and Curly jumped in the front. "He won't be so lucky next time," he said darkly.

"Let's bury our friend first," Bradley muttered, opening up his car door. "C'mon, let's go to Jay's."

Katie got in the car and a few moments later Bradley's car was turning out of the school parking lot like Dale's had just before. Katie thought it was pretty lucky that Dale hadn't walked right up to them and hit Jeff then and there after arguing with Susan about him – he had done it before. Katie highly doubted that Dale's reluctance to start a fight was due to personal growth and improvement of temper. If he hadn't started in on Jeff, there was probably a reason, one Katie found herself wondering about the rest of the drive to Jay's.

 _In the paper today_

 _Tales of war and of waste_

 _But you turn right over to the T.V. page_

Friday wasn't nearly as eventful as the day before. Dale had already given up trying to get a response from Katie in class and Katie didn't know if that was because his attention span was that short or because Susan had said something to him, but either way she was grateful not to have to listen to her brother's gang's name being hissed at her every five minutes of the classes she shared with Dale. Saturday was spent in her bedroom, but not in her bed. She had accrued plenty of homework over the few days she had missed earlier that week and she knew she would be in even less of a mood to do homework tomorrow, so decided to buckle down and get it done as quickly as possible. And then Sunday rolled around and Katie rolled out of bed with a heavy feeling in her stomach.

As she brushed her blonde hair she took in her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her eyes, though they had always resembled Rick's hazel ones, bore even more similarity to her brother's in the form of the bags under her eyes. She had actually slept quite restfully the night before thanks to the many hours she had spent that day studying and catching up on her homework, but one night of dreamless sleep didn't come close to making up for a week full of nightmares.

She sat at the kitchen table with her mom in silence as they waited together for Rick to come downstairs. They were due to leave for the graveyard any minute and Katie had no idea what to expect when they arrived there. She hadn't been to a funeral since her grandmother had passed away ten years ago, so she didn't exactly remember much from it. She expected a lot of people would be there, and she was glad she would have her mom there, too. The only days Shirley ever really got off work were Sundays, and most of the time if there was a shift to pick up at the diner that night she would take it.

"Oh," Shirley breathed when Rick appeared at the bottom of the staircase. He was wearing clothes Katie hadn't even known he owned. From the black slacks to the white button down top and black tie… Though he still wore his usual old black leather jacket and his hair with too much oil in it, he looked like someone else. "You look just like your father," Shirley whispered and wiped at her eyes with one hand while waving her other hand distractedly.

Rick's jaw was closed so tight that Katie could see the bone jutting out and in that moment she saw just how difficult this day was going to be for him. She had spent the past several days reliving the moment Mike was shot, trying not to relive it, crying more than she had in years, sleeping more than she ever had before, and just completely wallowing in her own self-pity. Mike had been a constant in her life for as long as she could remember. He had always been at their house; the three of them had grown up playing together and in the past year or so partying and joking around together. When Rick had been in the cooler and Craig Chambers had been caught fooling around with another girl, Mike was the one who had given him a beating for her. She had looked up to him in the same sort of way that she looked up to Rick. But Mike had been Rick's best friend. _Rick's_. The grief Katie felt was just a fraction of what Rick had been dealing with, and he had still managed to force himself out of bed and out of the house each day. Suddenly Katie felt pathetic.

"We should get going," Shirley spoke again, picking her car keys up off the kitchen table and shuffling Rick and Katie out of the house.

The drive to the graveyard was silent, and when they arrived Katie had to check her watch to make sure they weren't late, and they weren't, but they certainly weren't early judging by the number of people that had already gathered. Katie had always known Mike was an easy guy to get along with, but she was shocked to see how wide his personality had spread.

Katie stood close by her mom and Rick as people milled about and some approached Rick to pat him on the back and say their _sorrys._ At one point Shirley disappeared to seek out Mike's mom and Katie was left holding tight on to Rick's right arm, which she grudgingly let go of a minute later to allow him to properly shake hands with George and Troy King.

Despite Rick having dated the Kings' sister off and on for several months, Brumly and the River Kings had still managed to keep whatever problems they had from time to time over Jodie out of the two gangs. The River Kings had never been at the throats of the Brumly boys like the Brumly boys were now with the Shepard gang. And that was because the Shepard boys had come looking for Mike, because they made a girl issue a gang issue the moment a gun was pulled and a guy was shot dead.

"Hey," Jodie King said quietly, appearing beside Troy and opening up her arms to envelope Rick in a long hug.

When they finally broke apart Bradley pulled away from a conversation with a couple of Tigers to clap Rick on the shoulder a couple of times and the pair grinned at each other grimly.

"Mr Harvey mentioned wanting you to help carry the coffin," Bradley said and Rick quickly excused himself to head off in search of Mike's dad.

Bradley wrapped an arm around Katie's shoulder and pulled her tight against his side for a moment before pulling back and placing his hands on either side of her head to cup her face. She could smell the faintest scent of liquor on his breath when he spoke.

"You okay?" he asked and she nodded slightly, the heat of his hands warming her cold skin. "C'mon," he said, pulling away after a couple of seconds, "we've got front row seats."

The service was short and simple as most services were for people on their side of town who couldn't really afford much else. Mike's dad said a few words while his mom cried unashamedly into an old handkerchief. Bradley balanced himself again Katie from time to time. When it was over and Mike's coffin was in the frosted earth and fresh dirt had been shoveled on top, the gang gathered together back at the Thomas' house. They drank beer after beer and shot after shot in salute to their brother. Shirley made them all sandwiches for lunch and by the time she left for work later that afternoon most of the boys had fallen asleep in their chairs or on their spots on the carpet of the living room. Katie sat on one end of the couch watching the picture on the television swim while Rick sat so still in the armchair beside her that she thought he had fallen asleep like the others until he spoke.

"Mike died," he said clearly despite a slight slur.

Katie froze, not knowing how she was supposed to respond to that. The etiquette might have been to give her condolences, but that just didn't seem sincere, so she said the only thing there really was to say to such a blunt statement. "He is," she agreed quietly.

Silence fell between them again for a few minutes. At some point Rick lent forward over the coffee table and poured the last of the bourbon into a glass. "I don't know what I'm gonna do yet," Rick said, looking back at Katie on the couch. The fire in his bloodshot eyes scared the crap out of her. "But I'm gonna ruin them." He picked the glass up and tipped the bourbon down his throat in a couple large gulps.

 _Hey now, hey now_

 _Don't dream it's over_

 _Hey now, hey now_

Curly lay on the grass in Glenn's front yard, tossing a football into the air above him and catching it absent-mindedly as he waited for Glenn to finish up under the hood of his car. The sun was about to go down, so it wouldn't be much longer until Glenn had to leave the search for what was causing the problem with his car not turning over in the mornings for another day. Their day had been fairly quiet even for a Sunday. They had hung out with a few of the other guys from the gang for a few hours at Jay's that afternoon before coming back to Glenn's place. Dale and Glenn had argued intermittently about what the reason for Glenn's car starting issues were, since it _definitely_ wasn't the battery, while Curly had tossed the football around with a couple of the others. One by one the group of boys had dwindled until it was just Glenn and Curly left.

Undoubtedly, their day had been fairly quiet because most of the people they knew outside of their gang had spent their day mourning Mike Harvey. A few of the Tigers that had gone to the funeral had arrived at Jay's not long before the Shepards had left. Craig Chambers, who had gone to the funeral despite having had his ass kicked by Mike last year for cheating on Katie, wondered aloud how long it would be until The Dingo went out of business. In the week since the shooting Jay's popularity had soared and Curly imagined that The Dingo would have lost most of its regular customers. He certainly hadn't been back there since last Sunday and he didn't think anybody else who had been there on that busy afternoon would be hurrying back, either.

Thinking about Craig brought Curly's thoughts to Katie and how she hadn't said a word to any of them since returning to school on Thursday. The only thing Dale's taunting had done was get him into another argument with his girl. He hadn't gotten a rise out of Katie, who normally would have teased him back and spent their classes together trying not to let them distract her from her worksheets.

Despite Tim and Rick's aversion to one another, which to the best of Curly's knowledge went back to their own years at school together, but had flared up when Tim caught one of Rick's boys selling trips on their turf only six months ago, there had never been any major issues that prevented the Shepard and Brumly boys from being civil with one another at school and out in more social environments. And now Curly and his friends had to keep an eye out for Brumly boys wherever they went. Hell, Dale had been smacked in the face by Jeff Griffiths the moment he had stepped into the school building on Monday. As hard as it may have been to believe for anybody that hadn't witnessed the fight, Dale hadn't physically done anything to provoke Jeff, but apparently just being a Shepard was provocation enough for Brumly at the moment.

Curly still couldn't properly comprehend how completely upside down the world had tipped because of one incident – one stupid, reckless incident. He wondered how Arnie was doing in the cooler, if he was still so rabid and full of hatred for Mike, if he had realised that he had killed a guy because of a lie Angela had told to get herself out of trouble, and if he regretted his actions that day as much as Curly did. He would probably never admit it to himself much less anybody else, but Tim was right. Curly was thoughtless and that thoughtlessness had gotten his buddy locked up, a man shot dead, and his gang into hot water with another.

"Fuck this," Glenn swore and slammed the hood of his car closed. The loud noise startled Curly and he took his eye off of the football to glance over at Glenn just in time for Glenn to turn around and witness the football falling through the air to hit Curly square in the mouth.

Curly cussed as he sat up and touched his fingers to his bottom lip as Glenn doubled over laughing. He could taste warmth against his tongue and knew before he pulled his fingers away that his lip was definitely bleeding. "Great," he muttered, flipping Glen the bird.

 _Only shadows ahead_

 _Barely clearing the roof_

 _Get to know the feeling of liberation and relief_

* * *

Hope you guys enjoyed chapter two, and if you did (or even if you didn't) fling me a review and let me know (:


	3. Bad Blood

**Author's Note:** I've just finished writing the next chapter, so I thought I should probably post this one now. Sorry for the delay in posting! Thanks again to Gigi for your great review! I'm glad you're enjoying the fic so far, but yes, the characters and plot are somewhat different to the original version lol. I was fifteen when I wrote the original, and a lot has changed since then, which I hope has allowed me to write scenes and characters with a bit more depth to them (:

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from Taylor Swift's song, Bad Blood. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

 _ **Friday, 20 December 1968**_

 _Now we got problems_

 _And I don't think we can solve them_

 _You made a really deep cut_

The end of the semester was inching closer and closer with each tick of the clock that went by in their final class of the day. School would be out for the next two weeks and everybody was bursting to get out of class as the teacher gave instructions on the essay that was due to be completed and handed in once school started up again in the new year.

"Alright," Miss Hewitt said, wrapping up her speech. "I can see most of you didn't take any of that in, so pass around these worksheets," she handed a stack to the first desk of each aisle of desks lined in the room, "and once you have one you may leave."

The three boys in the back row grinned at each other, glad to be starting the winter break off five minutes earlier than the rest of the school. But when they finally got their worksheets and bustled out of the classroom, not bothering to return Miss Hewitt's well wishes for happy holidays, it seemed like all of the other teachers had given up and let the rest of the school go early, too. The final bell didn't ring until majority of the students were already out of the school building and hanging around in the parking lot, throwing footballs, flirting with their boyfriends or girlfriends, and chatting away to their friends about the various parties on that night.

It was well known among the seniors at Will Rogers High School that any party held by Terry Jones was a pretty good one, especially an end of term one for his classmates. The Shepard boys were bound to be in attendance, though, as were the Brumly ones, which led to much conversation about what the atmosphere of the party would be like. The two gangs had failed at keeping their issues out of the school on the first day back after Mike had been shot, but there hadn't been any physical altercations since, just plenty of name-calling and death glares. Surely, though, in a more alcohol-soaked and less strict environment there would be drama...

"I like you guys, and I want ya to be there tonight," Terry Jones spoke charismatically to Curly, Dale and Glenn as they hung around Dale's car, waiting for Dale's younger brother to appear so that they could get off of school grounds and not return for a fortnight, "but I need to know there ain't gonna be any trouble from you with Brumly. I know there're some," he glanced warily at Curly, "issues, between you guys, but I can't have it comin' up at my party. I got a reputation to uphold," he grinned at the boys and Dale snorted.

"Don't you think you'd be better off tellin' this to Rick's boys over there?" Glenn asked, raising his hands in surrender and nodding his head in the direction of Bradley and Jeff. "Jeff hit _Dale_ last week, remember? Not the other way round."

Tim had told the boys to lay low, which meant they couldn't go looking for fights like Jeff clearly had been last week, but it didn't mean they couldn't fight back if a fight were to be picked. Despite Glenn's theatrical innocence, the boys were itching to even the playing field, and if the stars aligned tonight, they might just get one.

"Don't you worry," Terry nodded, "I'm heading for them right after this. I just wanted to make sure we're all on the same page so we can all have a good night tonight, alright."

"Sure thing," Glenn grinned.

"But if they start shit, we'll finish it," Dale said, leaning against the side of his car coolly and crossing his arms over his chest.

Terry assured the three boys that their _finishing_ anything wouldn't be necessary and disappeared across the parking lot to speak to the Brumly boys.

"Dickhead," Curly muttered, flicking his cigarette on the ground and crushing it with his shoe.

"He's alright," Glenn shrugged, but Dale rolled his eyes at Curly in disagreement with Glenn.

Glenn was too laidback to have a major problem with anybody, but Curly and Dale were the opposite, always ready to pounce should something go awry. Curly particularly didn't like the way Terry Jones strutted about, stopping to talk to every man and his dog like he was everybody's best fucking friend.

He watched as Terry Jones approached Bradley, Jeff and Katie as Susan appeared next to Dale after having wisely chosen to part ways with Katie _before_ they made it to the Brumly boys this time. Terry was obviously giving them the same spiel he had given Curly, Dale and Glenn just a few minutes before, and while Bradley seemed to be agreeing with what Terry was saying, his hands shoved in his pockets indifferently, it didn't look like Jeff was having much of it.

Jeff slouched with his arms crossed against his chest like Dale and kept shooting them fiery glares to go with the cautious ones Katie was throwing them every so often as she listened to Terry and Bradley speaking. At one point Curly caught Katie's eye for one hair of a second before she quickly turned away and Curly couldn't help but wonder what she thought of all of this. She hadn't acted angry about any of it like Jeff and Bradley had been for the past couple of weeks whenever they passed each other in the halls at school, but she certainly hadn't been alright with what had happened if her ignoring their existence was anything to go by.

Across the parking lot, Terry was saying his goodbyes until later to Bradley, Jeff and Katie.

"You decided to come tonight?" Bradley asked Katie when Terry was finally gone.

Katie had spent majority of the week listening to Susan prattle on about how great Terry's parties always were, and they _were_ , but Katie wasn't so sure she was in the mood for a party.

"I don't know," she responded with a shrug of her shoulders. "It doesn't feel right."

"We got drunk after the funeral, getting drunk at a party ain't much different, just better music." Jeff said, a harshness to his tone that seemed to surprise himself as much as it did Katie. "Can we get outta here?"

Bradley nodded at Jeff and Jeff climbed into the backseat of Bradley's car. Katie headed for the passenger seat, but Bradley pulled a hand out of his pocket and wrapped it around her wrist, stopping her from walking any further. "It might do you some good," he said, his light blue eyes connecting with Katie's hazel ones, "just to have some fun for a while."

Katie held his gaze for a moment, frozen in place by the hand on her wrist, before giving a small nod and looking away. Bradley let go of her and she climbed into the passenger seat of his car.

Katie held onto her wrist the whole drive home, absent-mindedly running her fingers over the part that had been in Bradley's grip as she tried to understand the strange feeling sitting in the pit of her stomach.

"We'll pick you up at seven?" Bradley asked when he pulled his car to a stop outside the Thomas' house.

Katie glanced at Jeff in the backseat and then at Bradley. Maybe he was right. Maybe it would do her some good to be in a social environment, to listen to the music, and to giggle and sip beer with Susan and her other friends from school. This was her senior year and in a blink of an eye she had somehow made it halfway. The number of end of semester parties she had left was shrinking, and whether it felt right or not, she was sure Mike wouldn't have felt right about her passing up an opportunity to have fun because of him.

"Okay," she agreed, giving the two boys a quick wave before climbing out of the car and bounding up the steps of her front porch.

 _Did you have to hit me where I'm weak?_

 _Baby, I couldn't breathe, and rub it in so deep_

 _Salt in the wound like you're laughing right at me_

The party had been going for about an hour when the Brumly boys walked in through the front door and immediately Curly felt the mood of the night shift. A few of the Tiber Street Tigers in their grade glanced in the direction of the Shepard boys hanging around the lounge area as the Brumly boys greeted some of the River Kings closer to the front door. Katie was among them and it was only a few minutes after they had arrived that Susan left Dale alone with the guys to go and see Katie and persuade her to have a beer.

"There gonna be trouble tonight, boys?" Craig Chambers asked, leaning over the back of the couch Curly and Glenn sat on and clapping them on their shoulders, an excited grin spread across his face.

"Fuck off, Chambers," Curly grunted, shrugging Craig's hand from his shoulder.

"No need to be rude, man," Craig said as he moved around the couch to sit on the coffee table in front of them. "You might need us if the River Kings decide to back Brumly in a fight," he explained, glancing over to where the Brumly boys and River Kings were immersed in lively conversation, "and I'm pretty sure Thomas is back with the King girl again so they probably will."

Curly followed Craig's line of sight and it almost physically hurt him to have to admit Craig was right. Curly, Glenn and Dale could easily take Jeff and Bradley, but the Shepard boys would be sorely outnumbered if the several River Kings at the party decided to back up Brumly. There was already a rift between the Shepards and the River Kings because Tim didn't like the grass they kept trying to sell on his turf. The River Kings would probably be more than happy to side with Brumly should it come down to a rumble of sorts.

"Stop stirrin' shit, Craig," Glenn teased. "So long as they keep to themselves we won't hurt 'em."

"Alright," Craig said disbelievingly and the topic of conversation changed.

More Tigers gathered with Craig and the Shepards, and despite Craig being an annoying shit Curly felt as though, for a while at least, the mood of the party almost managed to return to what it had been before Brumly had walked in.

An hour and several beers passed as the music thumped through the house and Terry Jones made his way round to all of the people that had come to his party. He looked pleasantly surprised to find that there hadn't been any issues between the two gangs and that there didn't look to be any coming so long as they continued to ignore each other. Curly had been keeping an eye on Brumly, though, not wanting to give them a chance to sneak up on him. They had traveled from the front door to hang around the home bar on the other side of the large lounge room, and Katie and Susan, who had previously been talking animatedly with a few other girls from school, had returned to the bar and the Brumly boys to grab another drink from the cooler in the corner.

Curly tried not to stare in case the wrong person noticed, but he didn't miss it when Katie wobbled on her feet and Bradley placed a hand on the small of her back to steady her. She recoiled ever so slightly, but a second later she was smiling up at Bradley, and Curly wondered if he had misread her reaction.

He tuned back in to the story Dale was telling the Tigers about the time he and Curly had broken each other's ribs and when he added a smart-aleck comment that had Glenn roaring with laughter – even though he had heard the same story and comment a hundred times – he noticed the front door close behind a head of long blonde hair. Dale finished his story and the conversation moved again while Curly drunkenly tried to convince himself that he was in need of some fresh air, too.

He looked around and found that everybody was talking among themselves except for Dale, who wasn't paying attention to anything but the fact that Susan was still standing with Bradley, Jeff and the River Kings. Nobody would notice if Curly were to get up and leave the group, and if they did he could just claim to be getting another beer from the fridge in the kitchen. He asked himself if this was something he wanted to do, but he knew it was, he just wasn't sure why.

He didn't know why he felt the urge to follow Katie Thomas out onto the front porch now of all possible times. He had wondered about her several times in the past couple of weeks since Arnie had shot a man in front of them, and even though she had seemed perfectly alright before she had disappeared out the front door, he just couldn't shake the strange urge to make sure anyway.

 _Now did you think it all through?_

 _All these things will catch up to you_

 _And time can heal but this won't, so if you're coming my way, just don't_

Katie leant on her forearms resting on the railing of Terry Jones' front porch, leaning forward and looking at the simple flowerbed below. She remembered with every party here how nice Terry's house was and that despite him getting along with most of the greasers he certainly lived a bit closer to the west side of Tulsa than the rest. It wasn't by any leap the kind of house you would find a soc living in, but it was clean and tidy, and a bit newer and bigger than what Katie was used to.

She inhaled a deep breath of the cold night's air and wondered how long it would be until Bradley came out to check on her. She had come here with him, as she had to many other parties in the past, but right at that moment, after he had just touched the small of her back to catch her from toppling over, she didn't want to be too close to him again. She could have been reading too far into the meaning behind his actions, but the two small touches he had given her today, and even the way he had cupped her head at Mike's funeral, had felt like something more than just mere touches.

She heard the front door open behind her and didn't bother to look back to see who it was. Yet when they leant against the porch railing beside her in the same manner and fiddled with a pack of cigarettes in front of them, Katie realized that those hands did not belong to Bradley.

"Smoke?" he asked and Katie looked up into the dark blue eyes of Curly Shepard.

She faltered for a single moment before turning her gaze back down to the garden below and said, "I don't smoke."

"But you _do_ remember how to talk to me," he said, grinning widely at her. "I thought you'd forgotten."

"I don't have anything to say to you," she said with a shrug of her shoulders, refusing to meet his eyes again.

"Because you're not allowed to, right?" he asked, only half teasing.

"I'm _allowed_ to talk to whoever I want," Katie responded, looking up at the cloudy sky for a change of scenery and admiring the way her words formed clouds of white frost against the dark night. "I just don't want to talk to _you_ ," she said simply.

Curly snorted. "So your brother hasn't warned you off us then?"

"No," she responded indignantly, followed a few seconds later by, "I'm just smart enough to know that it's not a good idea being friends with people who are friends with a murderer." The words were out before she could even think them through properly, much less stop them rolling off of her tongue.

She frowned out at the street as a car drove past, blinking back the water that had quickly sprung into her eyes and inwardly cussing herself out for drinking so much.

Curly thought of biting back at her with a scathing comment, but as he watched her blinking furiously to contain her tears, he decided that maybe she didn't mean her words as harshly as she had said them.

Instead, he remained quiet and after a few moments of silence, Katie breathed in deeply to calm herself, but her exhale was cut short by a deafeningly loud _crack_ that reverberated off of their eardrums, causing Curly to flinch and glance out at the street and Katie to gasp sharply and whirl around to the front of the house, stumbling forward to peer into one of the windows with a hand clasped over her mouth. Her frantic eyes searched the dozens of people dancing and laughing and carrying on as though a gun hadn't just gone off.

"It's okay," Curly said a moment later, looking away from the street to see her standing in front of him, her trembling hand still clutched over her mouth as she turned back to face him, "it was just a car." He had heard plenty of cars backfire in his life, but for a split-second he had recognised it for the same thing that Katie clearly had.

Katie's wide eyes looked out at the street and then back at Curly as she slowly pulled her hand down from her mouth and let out the large breath she hadn't realised she had been holding. She reached out and stepped forward to hold tight onto the porch railing, leaning against it again and allowing it to hold her up, which relieved Curly because he wasn't so sure she would let him hold her up himself. She took a couple more long and deep breaths, and when she exhaled the last one she laughed a little and looked at Curly.

She had a small, morbid grin on her face, and then she looked back down at the flower bed below her and shook her head, laughing again. Curly leaned against the railing beside her wondering what on earth she could be thinking at that moment, but he couldn't help the grin that crept across his face nor the fact that he liked the sound of her laughing. He had heard her laugh before, but never like this.

The laughter was short lived and when it stopped, Curly held his beer out to her because despite her laughing instead of bursting into tears at something that had sounded like a gunshot, her hands were still shaking. It was surprising, still, when she tensed for only a second before taking the beer from Curly's hand and tipping her head back to take a couple of gulps. She held the beer out to him and he took it back and had a sip for himself. When he pulled the bottle away from his lips he noticed her looking at him. She didn't glare or look away when he looked her in the eyes; she just kept looking at him, a thoughtful look on her face. Her eyes glistened just like they had when he had seen her after Mike had been shot, and for a moment he saw her as he remembered her – her face flecked with blood, her hair messy and her hazel green eyes wild.

Curly's throat tightened and he hoped he wouldn't be making a mistake by saying what he said next. "I'm sorry you saw what happened."

Surprise flashed across Katie's face as she watched him push himself away from the porch railing and headed back inside.

When Curly reclaimed his seat on the couch inside, after having retrieved a new beer from the kitchen, he found that everybody was as he had left them.

"Where'd you go?" Dale barked, dragging his eyes from where he was still watching Susan laughing with Jeff and Bradley.

"To get another beer," Curly answered, holding his cold new beer up as proof.

Dale squinted at Curly for a moment, clearly not believing him, but obviously decided to let it go for now. He had bigger fish to fry, it seemed. "That bastard is flirtin' with Susan to get a rise outta me," he said, flicking his eyes back to Jeff, "keeps lookin' over here every so often to make sure I'm seein' it."

"Remember what Tim said," Glenn cut in warningly.

"Which part?" Dale responded, a malicious glint in his eyes.

Curly could see Dale was just about bursting out of his skin to give Jeff what he deserved for flirting with his girl. He had had an edge to him whenever he saw Jeff since Jeff had jumped him at school the morning after Arnie had shot Mike, but the alcohol combined with watching Susan with that jerk for the last, what, ten minutes, twenty? Curly truly couldn't gauge how long he had been outside with Katie, but he knew however long it had been was long enough to build Dale into a quiet fury.

"Tim'll have your head, man," Glenn tried to convince him, "it ain't worth it."

"I ain't gonna sit here and keep watchin' this shit," Dale rounded on Glenn. "We're Shepards, not bitches." And while Tim had told them all to lay low, he had also told them not to be little bitches. Jeff was starting shit, whether it be physically or strategically, he was starting it and Curly realised as Dale stood up that there wasn't going to be any stopping him from finishing it just as he had warned Terry earlier that afternoon.

"Shit," Glenn muttered as Dale made a beeline for Susan and Jeff. He jumped out of his seat and fell in step with Curly, who pushed back the déjà vu that gripped his mind – following a friend to defend his girlfriend... He just hoped Dale didn't have a gun, too.

"You tryin' it on with my girl, Griffiths?" Dale asked, coming to stand still beside Susan, a hand wrapped around her forearm.

"Not my fault she'd rather spend the night with me than your ugly head," Jeff quipped back at him.

Dale looked at Susan for a moment and shook his head slightly, a see-what-you've-done comment unspoken. He looked back at Jeff darkly and sized him up.

"Outside!" came a shout from his right and a second later Terry was pushing his way between a couple of River Kings who had stopped their conversation to listen into Dale and Jeff's. "So help me God, you are not fighting inside my house."

Dale glanced at Terry and back at Jeff, who was staring back with eyes just as hard. Dale nodded toward the front door and after a moment's consideration Jeff headed for it, Dale hot on his heels.

The moment they were outside and down the steps of the front porch, Dale swung at Jeff from behind and punched him hard in the jaw in a similar motion to what Curly had used on Mike just a couple of weeks before. Curly and Glenn bounded down the front steps as Bradley ran up and grabbed Dale by the shirt. Curly knew Bradley was probably grabbing at Dale to stop him from taking another swing at Jeff until Jeff had regained his footing from his attack, but the movement was enough to propel Curly and Glenn further forward. Curly got to him first and grabbed Bradley's shoulders from behind and yanked him hard enough that he lost his grip on Dale.

At the back of his mind Curly thought that at least when Tim gave them a lecture about this later he would honestly be able to say he didn't start it this time. And then Bradley's fist collided with Curly's stomach, causing him to double over and put his face in the perfect spot for Bradley's next punch, which struck him in the side of the face and knocked him to the ground.

Curly scrambled to get back up as soon as he hit the ground while Bradley came at him again. Glenn came flying in from Curly's left and tackled Bradley into the dirt just as Curly found his feet again, and Glenn's jumping in brought the numbers to three against two. Curly caught sight of a River King coming at him from the corner of his eye and a second later he was twisting to the left to dodge a hit and throwing his right fist out to break the guy's nose.

All around them people from the party were spilling out of the house and onto the front lawn to watch the fight, but Katie stood stock still in the same spot Curly had left her in only a few minutes before, watching the fight unfold. One by one more boys were jumping into the fight in an attempt to even out the playing field. What had started out a fight between two boys had quickly spiralled into an all out gang brawl on Terry Jones' front lawn.

"Boys!" Susan exclaimed as she appeared beside Katie and threw her hands up in the air in exasperation. "God forbid I talk to a male that isn't Dale."

Katie gave her friend a dubious look, knowing that when she had left them to get some fresh air Susan had been getting along a little too well with Jeff, whom she normally despised when sober.

Sirens sounded not too far in the distance, but the fight showed no signs of dying down, and when two squad cars came to a screeching halt outside Terry's house a minute later most of the crowd of onlookers quickly retreated back inside whilst the boys involved in the fight pulled away too late to make a run for it.

Katie didn't know if Terry had called the cops himself or if it had been a neighbor on the otherwise quiet street, but either way, the police were not going to overlook a house full of drunken teenagers. More police would roll up once the instigators of the fight were taken away, and they'd be there to shut down the party and send the underage drinkers on their way. Not for the first time, the gangs had gone and ruined the rest of the party for everybody else, but Katie figured Terry only had himself to blame. He had been very naive to believe that all the gangs could peacefully co-exist.

"I guess we're walking home," Katie turned to Susan, not wanting to watch as the boys were lined up on the sidewalk and one by one packed into the back seats of the cop cars.

"My place is closer," Susan huffed and held an arm out for Katie, who took it, and the two girls started across the front lawn arm in arm as the first squad car carrying Curly, Glenn and Dale pulled away from the curb.

 _Band-aids don't fix bullet holes_

 _You say sorry just for show_

 _If you live like that, you live with ghosts_

Curly wasn't surprised to find Tim in the parking lot of the police station the next morning, leaning against his car and smoking a cigarette as he waited for his three boys to be released from the drunk tank. It was almost midday and Curly wasn't sure if Tim had heard from their mum - who surely would have received a phone call from the police last night - earlier that morning or if word of the fight had made its way back to Buck's after Terry's party was shut down last night. Curly supposed it didn't really matter how he had found out, he was just glad it wasn't him that had to tell Tim about it.

"Big night," Tim commented, arching an eyebrow at the three boys once they were within earshot. He took another drag of his cigarette and, noticing the bags under his eyes, Curly wondered if Tim was commenting on his own night or the boys' night, or both. "So," Tim said as he exhaled a cloud of smoke and flicked his cigarette butt onto the asphalt of the parking lot, "what happened?"

Curly and Glenn looked at Dale, who scowled at them, shrugged and dug his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "One of Rick's boys spent most of the night talkin' up my girl." He shrugged again. "There's only so long I can sit and watch that without actin'."

Tim narrowed his eyes at Dale, but he seemed too tired to put much menace into the look. "Your girl," he said. "What was she doin' talkin' to Brumly?"

"She's friends with Katie," Dale explained, "Rick's kid sister."

Tim nodded and waited a minute before speaking again, obviously in thought. "Doesn't sound like she's that great a girl if she's lettin' Brumly sweet talk her, in front of her boyfriend or not," he said finally, and when Dale looked away and chose not to respond, Tim moved on. "I heard y'all weren't the only ones involved?"

"Things got crazy pretty quick," Glenn answered grudgingly. "Once Curly and I got involved the River Kings jumped in, but a few of the Tigers helped us out."

"Good," Tim nodded again and looked past the three boys at something behind them. Curly looked over his shoulder to see a few of the Tigers walking out of the front doors of the police building behind them. Craig nodded an acknowledgement to the boys and all four returned the gesture. "Well I got shit to do so get in," Tim spoke again, walking around to the driver's door of his car and opening it. "And don't go thinkin' I'm happy about this cause I ain't, but I also ain't gonna leave you here stranded and waiting for Brumly to get out and kick off round two."

' _Cause, baby, now we got bad blood_

 _You know it used to be mad love_

 _So take a look what you've done_

Katie sat across from Susan at one of the tables in Jay's, swirling her straw around in her milkshake with one hand while the other held up her heavy head.

"So, explain to me again why the whole fight shouldn't be blamed on you?" she asked and Susan glared at her. "Sorry," she added, momentarily dropping her straw and raising her hand in mock surrender before resuming her stirring, "but you _were_ spending a greater deal of time at the party with someone that wasn't your boyfriend. I didn't think you even liked Jeff; you're always saying what a creep he is."

"I wasn't exactly in my right mind," Susan bit back, "and Jeff has a knack of picking up on that."

Katie smirked. "All the more reason why you should have stayed close to your boyfriend, or did you forget who that was?" she asked, remembering the drama Susan had caused only a month and a half ago when she and Dale had momentarily broken up and she had wound up kissing Jeff after one too many beers.

"Let's not forget that _you_ were the reason I was standing with Brad and Jeff in the first place," Susan replied. "And don't make me regret not telling them about Curly Shepard following you outside," she threw in for good measure.

Katie froze mid-stir and her mouth popped open and shut at Susan as she scrambled for something to say - a way to tell Susan she was delirious. "What're you talking about?" she finally stumbled out.

Susan rolled her eyes. "Dumb isn't a good look on you, Katie," she said bluntly. "You disappeared wantin' air and a minute later I see none other than Curly Shepard follow you outside, and you were both out there a while before he came back in." Katie averted her gaze from her friend, but that just made Susan lean forward eagerly. "What happened?"

"Nothing," Katie answered quickly. "We said all of two words to one another."

Susan raised an eyebrow and gave Katie a pointed look before sighing. "You haven't spoken to any of them since before the whole thing at The Dingo," she said, her voice taking on a kinder tone, and Katie felt her stomach flip over the reference to the day that still gave her nightmares.

"I'm aware," Katie said stiffly, her eyes on her milkshake.

"Katie," Susan started, but Katie cut her off.

"Don't," she warned and Susan leant back in her seat, a slightly amused look on her face.

"Don't what?"

"Don't ask if I want to talk about it, because I don't," Katie said with what she hoped was a sense of finality.

Susan just frowned and took a long sip of her milkshake. "If it means anything –"

"It doesn't."

"I don't think they meant to kill him."

Katie waited a minute and when it was clear to her that Susan wasn't going to elaborate, she had to take the bait and prompt her. "What's that meant to mean?"

"I was with Dale and Glenn for a bit that night," she said with a shrug. "They obviously didn't say much, but they seemed as shocked as I was."

Katie took a sip of her milkshake as Susan's words brought Curly to mind, specifically the way he had pounced at Arnie just before the gun went off. The way he had flinched when that car backfired last night. _I'm sorry you saw what happened_ echoed in her head and she shook it as if that would clear it.

"Is it snowing?" Susan asked, bringing Katie back to the present. Katie looked at Susan, who was squinting out one of the windows nearby, and followed her gaze. Sure enough, white little snowflakes were floating down to the ground outside for the first time this winter.

 _Now we got problems_

 _And I don't think we can solve them_

 _You made a really deep cut_


	4. Begin Again

**Author's Note:** Sorry again for the delay in updating! I was so happy with this chapter, but then I wrote the next one and I can't wait to post that one now, haha!

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from Rachel Platten's song, Begin Again. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 _ **Monday, 23 December 1968**_

 _I need a wrecking ball_

 _I want the sky to fall_

 _God, I feel so small tonight_

It was a well known superstitious theory that bad things often happened in threes. The trouble was, though, that there was never any way of knowing when something bad happened if two other terrible events were to follow or if the one was just a fluke. Yet when Dale delivered the story on Tim and Curly's doorstep of his younger brother stumbling through their front door all beaten and bloody, Curly knew that it could only be a sign of bad things to come.

Dale's brother, Tommy, and a friend of his from school had been walking the few blocks home from the Ribbon the night before. Tommy had waved his friend off at his gate and continued on alone, not thinking at all that he might be in danger walking one more street over in his own neighborhood, not until a car pulled up behind him to let out three boys who had no business being on Shepard turf.

"He's not even a member, man," Dale told Tim heatedly, pacing back and forth on the Shepards' front yard, "he's a fuckin' kid."

Curly had to bite back a snort of derision. Tommy was no more a kid than Curly had been at the age of fourteen, and six months later he had wound up in the reformatory for stupid behaviour similar to what was always getting Tommy stuck in detention. His age might have suggested he was just a kid, but he was alot more grown up for his age, as most of the kids on their side of Tulsa were.

"I know, I know," Tim growled, lighting up a cigarette and shaking his head. "You think they were gunnin' for him?"

"To send a message," Dale stopped pacing and looked Tim square in the eyes. "Yeah, I really fuckin' do."

Silence fell between the two while Tim took a few more puffs of his cigarette. "Round up the boys and tell 'em to meet at Pete's tonight at six," he said finally, looking from Curly to Dale and then digging his keys out of his jeans pocket as he walked toward his car parked in the driveway. "I'll see ya tonight."

"He better have a plan," Dale said, turning on Curly as Tim pulled out onto the street, "'cause I ain't doin' this layin' low shit anymore."

"I think he got the picture when you started that brawl on Friday night," Curly smirked.

"I didn't start shit," Dale spat and Curly held his hands up in surrender as Angela came walking up the sidewalk.

"What's goin' on?" Angela asked once she was close enough to be heard.

"Dale's brother got jumped by a bunch of guys from Brumly on his way home last night," Curly explained, glad to have someone else to talk to while Dale simmered where he stood. "You probably shouldn't be walkin' round on your own, either. Where've you been?"

"Don't go worrying about my safety, brother," she told Curly sarcastically, "I got dropped off down the road. And where I've been ain't your business."

He noted her ratty hair and smudged eye make-up as she continued past him and into the house, slamming the front door shut behind her. Curly shook his head, wondering how on earth his sister could still be getting around in just a skirt when it was snowing on and off more days than not lately. He looked back to Dale, who was pulling a cigarette out of the packet he had just dug out of his jacket pocket.

"C'mon," Dale grunted once his cigarette was lit. "We'd better go find the guys."

Curly stood up from where he had been sitting in an old, wooden chair by the front door and followed Dale to his car parked out on the street.

"How bad off is Tommy, anyway?" Curly asked as Dale pulled the car away from the curb and started off down the road.

"Can't open his left eye, broken nose, few cracked ribs," Dale listed. "The whole deal."

"Shit," Curly muttered and Dale nodded.

"The guys are gonna be just as mad, too." Dale took a puff of his cigarette and exhaled the smoke. "Whether your brother wants one or not, we're at war already."

They found the rest of the guys fairly easily. A few were at work, but most of the others were at home since it was still only morning. The two they hadn't managed to find at home or at Bucks, and that they knew didn't have proper jobs, were quickly spotted when Curly, Dale and Glenn, who they had picked up in their travels, walked into Jay's that afternoon.

They sat around and drank their Cokes while they waited for their burgers to come out, and once their food had been devoured in a matter of minutes the boys retreated back out into the frosty afternoon air to have a smoke. As they lit up, Curly noticed Craig and a couple of Tigers crossing the parking lot. Craig caught sight of him at the same time and flicked him a nod, which Curly returned.

"Sad day, boys," Craig said as he came closer to the group of Shepard boys standing nearby the front doors of Jay's. "Did ya hear about The Dingo?"

Curly glanced around him and saw blank faces reflecting his own.

"What happened?" Glenn asked, pushing himself off the wall he had been leaning against and straightening up.

"You don't know?" Craig scoffed. "Oh man, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but..." he trailed off, rubbing his hands together for heat and grinning around at a couple of his buddies.

"Just spit it out, Chambers," Dale ordered, not yet fully recovered from the mood he had been in that morning.

"The Dingo got bombed," Craig told them, "went up in flames late last night."

Curly remembered Craig wondering aloud just a week or two ago how long it would take for The Ding to go out of business.

"You do it?" Curly asked.

"Nah," Craig answered, "I reckon it was probably a dodgy insurance thing. There was no way they weren't gonna go under after the shooting anyway. It's a shame, though; I got into my first fight there," he grinned widely.

Glenn grinned fondly, "Yeah, with me when we were ten."

Laughter rang out around Curly and he joined in. The Dingo had been around a long time and so it had a lot of history, plenty of afternoons spent skiving off class there, chatting to girls and getting into fights. All that and more was discussed and reminisced on for the next hour or so until it was time for Curly and the guys to say goodbye to the Tigers and head off to Pete's for the meeting Tim had called.

When the whole gang was finally gathered around together in Pete's living room, Tim gave the gang the go ahead to stop holding back, just as Curly had suspected he would. Like Dale had said, whether Tim wanted one or not, they had been forced into war and their options were to either let beatings like Tommy's happen and hope they would eventually blow over, which was unlikely, or to start fighting back.

"They're comin' onto our turf now," Tim explained, "and not just to sell their shit once in a blue moon. They're coming into our territory and seekin' out us and our own, and we ain't gonna stand for that." Tim paused and looked around at his gang. "One step over the boundary and you jump on them. One word out of line and you kick 'em back into place, you hear? But watch your backs 'cause they're obviously gunnin' for us and they're gonna be even more so soon enough."

All around Curly, the guys in the gang were nodding their heads along with Tim's instructions, except for Dale, who just sat a few boys over from Curly, his lips pulled thin and his eyes set hard. Curly shared an anticipatory look with Glenn beside him. The pit of his stomach felt heavy with something he didn't think he recognised, but he sure as hell didn't like.

 _I need a tidal wave_

 _Come and wash away_

 _All the mess I made_

 _To make it right_

Christmas came and went without much excitement as it did most years on the east side of the city. The snow fell the heaviest the day after Christmas and then stopped altogether the day after that. Rain drizzled lightly all day just a couple of days later on Saturday, forcing everybody indoors until it finally slowed to a stop as the afternoon turned to dusk. Tim and Curly, who had spent most of the afternoon at home playing cards and drinking beer with Pete, were well and truly bored, a little bit soused, and ready for some action when the telephone started to ring.

Curly answered the phone to hear Dale on the other end. He was calling from a public phone not far from the pool hall to tell Tim about the two Brumly boys he had seen hanging around out the front of the pool hall on his way back from Jay's. The pool hall was only a couple of blocks away from the Ribbon and close to the heart of Shepard territory.

Tim, Pete and Curly were out of the house and in Tim's car not a minute after Curly hung up the phone, and five minutes later they were pulling into the parking lot of the pool hall. Dale sat on the curb not far from where they parked, and with fingers blue from the cold he took a drag of his cigarette and threw it on the asphalt to grind it out with his foot before heading over to the three boys climbing out of Tim's car.

The boys didn't need to ask Dale where the two Brumly boys were, they had spotted them as they pulled into the parking lot clear as day, gathered with two others underneath one of the lights down the side of the pool hall.

"How long have they been here?" Pete asked Dale as the four guys gathered around in front of Tim's car.

"No idea," Dale responded, "I called as soon as I spotted 'em."

"You know what they're doin'?" Tim asked, his eyes squinted suspiciously as he glanced at the corner of the building that the Brumly boys were on the other side of.

"Somethin' that required privacy. They were just comin' out of the pool hall when I saw 'em, and then they walked 'round the side."

Tim nodded and cracked his knuckles. "An eye for an eye, right?" he said to Dale, whose brown eyes darkened to something closer to black, shining maliciously in the light from the nearby streetlamp.

"Yeah," Dale replied, clenching his fists by his side.

With another nod, Tim popped up the collar of his leather jacket, dug his hands in its pockets and set off for where the two Brumly boys were partially hidden. Pete, Curly and Dale followed close behind him, hunched over slightly as if that would hide them from the frozen night's air. They rounded the corner and one of the Brumly boys, who Curly vaguely recognised from last year's graduating class but whose name he had never bothered to learn, caught sight of them almost instantly, shoving his friend, Dennis McKay, hard in the side with his elbow. The two other boys they were standing with looked up, one of whom pulled his tongue back into his mouth quickly, but not quickly enough for Curly to miss the little white square on it.

Tim reached the boys in a couple of long strides, and pulled his hands back out from his pockets to roughly grab the kid with the blotted paper in his mouth by the collar of his shirt. Upon a closer look, Curly realised the boy could only have been sixteen at most.

"The fuck is in your mouth, kid?" Tim asked gruffly, shaking him slightly by his shirt.

The kid shook his head and looked up at Tim with wide eyes. When Tim pulled his fist back and slammed it into the kid's face, Curly couldn't help the sick feeling that rose up in his stomach. This kid had nothing to do with it. People could get trips almost as easily as they could get grass these days, the kid just happened to be in the wrong place with the wrong people at the wrong time.

The other guy – the kid's friend – made a run for it and nobody bothered to go after him. Instead, Pete and Dale pounced on Dennis' buddy, while Tim dropped the kid and grabbed a hold of Dennis with Curly's help.

"Fuck off!" Dennis spat at them as he struggled against their hold, his face twisted with loathing though Curly didn't think he and Tim had really ever said more than a couple of sentences to him in the past. "You ain't gonna like what comes to you for this!"

"No," Tim growled back, catching his chin and holding it still so that he could look directly at him while Curly held him in place by his arms, "you ain't gonna like what comes to you for not only beating one of our boys on our turf, but for also sellin' this _shit_ ," he dug into Dennis' jacket pocket and pulled out a sheet of blotter paper, "to kids on my fuckin' land!"

Tim balled the paper up and shoved it in his own jeans pocket before breaking Dennis' nose with one hard punch. Blood spurted from his nostrils and he cried out and struggled harder against Curly's hold. Tim hit him again, this time in the gut in a move that mimicked what Dale was already doing to the other guy. A minute later Dale landed a hit to the side of his guy's head that turned his body rigid before collapsing. Pete didn't bother to try holding him up anymore and let him fall to the ground in a heap. Tim hit Dennis one more time in the face and then motioned for Curly to let him go.

Curly tossed him face first at the ground where he gasped for air and tried to pull himself to his feet, conscious still, unlike his friend. Tim kicked him back down into the concrete ground when he was on his knees though, and he rolled onto his back to glare up at Tim.

"You're gonna die for this," he threatened and then spat in Tim's direction.

Tim laughed menacingly. "You and your pathetic gang can't touch me, but I can promise you that you and your buddies won't be this lucky next time I catch y'all on my turf." He smirked, "Now be a good, little bitch and pass that on to Rick."

Tim flicked his head to Pete and Dale, who began retreating back around the corner the way they had come. Curly followed them, and a moment later after hearing Tim spit at Dennis, Tim caught up with him. The four boys walked back to Tim's car in silence and climbed in. Curly and Dale sat in the back with Pete riding shotgun, but they didn't go anywhere for a minute or two. Tim sat in the driver's seat and clutched the steering wheel tightly, staring straight out ahead at the street beyond the parking lot. Curly watched him, analysing and wondering what he must be thinking; if his slow and deep breaths were the only thing keeping Tim from going back for round two.

When Tim finally gunned the engine, he leant back a bit in his seat as he pulled out of the parking lot and lifted his left arm up to rest against the car window while he drove one-handed. The mood dissipated immediately, and soon the boys were pulling up out the front of Jay's and heading inside with grins on their faces and laughter spilling from their mouths.

 _I need a big move_

 _I need a sharp knife_

 _I need to cut these scars_

 _Right out of my life_

Katie sat in front of her mirror in her bedroom and watched as Susan curled her hair up into rollers, her eyebrows pinched together slightly in concentration. Susan had always loved how long and thick Katie's hair was and had somehow managed to convince Katie to let her curl it for the party tonight.

"Why are we even going tonight?" Katie asked, still feeling somewhat apprehensive about going into a party without anybody but Susan really by her side. "We're not really gonna know anybody."

"Sure we will," Susan responded, rolling her eyes at Katie in the mirror. "We're going with Pam and Janet for starters," she said, mentioning two of the girls they sat with in a couple of their classes at school. "And Dale will probably be there," she added, a sly grin creeping onto her lips.

Katie pinched her lips together like she had tasted something sour at the sound of Dale's name. "Really?" she asked dubiously. "He's not a nice guy, Susan."

"You only think that because he got into it with Dennis and Jimmy," Susan bit back, "never mind that they had no business hanging around on Shepard territory."

"They should be able to hang around wherever they want," Katie grumbled. "We all should."

"Yeah, in a perfect world, but nothing around here is perfect. I know you don't like bein' involved in the gang stuff, so just trust me, this whole thing seems pretty fair to me."

Katie looked away from the mirror and focused on her hands rested in her lap. It was true; she didn't like knowing what went on with her brother's gang. The ignorance was bliss at times because she was afraid of the worry she would have on her shoulders if she did keep better tabs on Rick and what he was doing. She didn't want to stress everyday about whether or not he would come home that night. But at times like these, when she heard hints and whispers about what her brother and his gang were getting up to, it made her worry regardless.

She felt Susan pull up another handful of hair and curl it into a roller, and she looked back up at her friend in the mirror, who didn't appear to be holding any ill feelings against Katie despite the silence that had fallen.

"So, you think you can get Dale back tonight?" Katie asked, choosing to push her worries for Rick to the back of her mind. "You better not leave me stranded."

"There _are_ going to be people we know there," Susan laughed. "I don't know about Dale, he's so hard to read sometimes, but I'm going to try."

"Have you seen him since last week?"

Susan shook her head, "Not since he told me where to go for causin' that fight at Terry's."

"So now you'll admit to causing it?"

"I'll admit to playing a part."

"Are you sure you don't like Jeff?" Susan shot Katie a revolted look and Katie laughed. "Well you do always seem to like him more when you've been drinking; maybe deep down you actually like him."

"I don't think so," Susan replied quickly. "He's never been anything but a jerk to me."

"He's not that bad."

"He's a hood."

"So is Dale."

Susan frowned at Katie and bit her bottom lip for a moment before saying decisively, "They're not the same."

An hour or so later after the sun had set, the two girls descended Katie's stairs and waited by the front door for Pam's older sister's car to pull into Katie's driveway. Rick, who had just come out of the kitchen holding a half eaten apple, looked his sister up and down.

"You're gonna freeze out there," he said, sauntering over to lounge in the armchair in front of the television. "It's started snowing again."

Katie glanced out the window near the front door and saw that it was indeed snowing lightly outside. She didn't doubt that Rick was right, her coat might keep her arms warm enough, but her legs below the hem of her dress were going to be covered in goose bumps the moment she set foot outside.

"You sure you don't wanna come to Buck's?" Katie asked hopefully.

Her brother had celebrated every new years eve at Buck's, and last year Katie had even been allowed to join him, but this new years eve was different, just like everything else now.

"Nah," he said, examining his apple for a good chunk to bite into, "I'm heading off to Dennis' in a minute." One of the guys had gotten out of the penitentiary just yesterday, so the gang was gathering at Dennis McKay's house to celebrate and bring in the new year together as a gang, with one member rejoined to make up for the one they'd lost - in numbers at least.

"How is he?" Katie asked, her stomach flipping at the thought of how badly he had been beaten a few nights ago.

Rick shrugged and glared darkly at his apple, "Seen better days, but he'll live."

Light from the window caught Katie's attention and a second later a horn was being honked outside. Susan opened the front door to find that their ride to Buck's had arrived.

"Have fun," Rick waved them off. "And keep an eye on Jodie if she's there!" he called out as Katie gave him a quick wave and followed Susan out onto the front porch.

 _Feel paralysed_

 _Like I'm frozen in time_

 _Just wanna close my eyes_

 _Make it go away_

Katie was never more relieved to be at Buck's than she was when she finally made it inside after having followed Pam, Janet and Susan in from Pam's sister's car, which they had to park further away than ever before. It was going to be a big night, and the walk, which only took a couple of minutes, had almost frozen her solid. She inwardly cursed herself for not wearing stockings over her legs, but every pair she had were getting old and the little holes in them were starting to grow with every wear.

It was warm inside Buck's, though, thanks to the dozen people just inside the entrance alone giving off enough body heat, and it was even warmer in the main area near the dance floor and bar, thanks to those dancing and the heater in one corner. The four girls made their way to the bar, discarded their coats to the side of it and grabbed a few beers, laughing and chatting away over the music playing somewhere nearby. The place was packed and much to Katie's surprise she did recognise a lot of the people there. Some were just people she had seen around Buck's before, and others were people she knew personally, like some of the Shepard and Tiber Street Tiger boys yelling and laughing raucously on the other side of the room, and a few of the River Kings and Jodie King who stood not too far away from the bar.

Choosing not to acknowledge the Shepards like she was mostly used to doing by now, Katie turned her back on them to tune into a conversation Pam and Susan were having when she caught sight of Jodie making a beeline for her through the crowd, a clear bottle three quarters full of something dark in her hand.

"Hey," Jodie greeted with a boozy grin when she was within earshot, "I take it your brother ain't with you?"

Katie shook her head, "No, he's hanging out with just the guys tonight."

Jodie rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah. Grieving and all that," she said and held her bottle out for Katie, "here, drink."

Katie hesitated and held up her beer, "I'm fine, thanks."

"No, you're not," Jodie said, squinting her eyes a little at Katie, "and if you're anything like your brother you're gonna need some of this, so drink." Again, Katie hesitated. "Relax, I'm not gonna poison you, little sister," Jodie teased and shoved the bottle of spirits into Katie's free hand as she took the beer from her other hand.

The bottle's lid was gone, and Katie considered it for a second before tipping the bottle up to her lips and taking a long gulp that burnt all the way down her throat to her stomach. When she pulled it away from her lips with a grimace, Jodie was looking at something over Katie's shoulder, and when Katie made to hand the bottle back, Jodie told her to hold onto it for her and disappeared past her.

"Rum?" Susan asked, nodding at the bottle still in Katie's hand.

Katie nodded and Susan took the bottle from her, took a much smoother swig and handed it back. Katie hardly noticed the spicy burning when she took another gulp of the rum, Jodie's reference to Mike's death swirling around in her mind. She couldn't escape him no matter where he went. Especially not when all around her she could see the ghost of him pulling her onto the dance floor at last year's new years eve party, or handing her a beer where she stood now near the bar, his green eyes light, happy and a little bit buzzed.

Katie turned away from the bar to take in her surroundings and quickly spotted where Jodie had taken off to. She stood on the other side of the room in a corner, looking up at a man with dark hair through her eyelashes. For a second Katie thought Jodie was looking up at Curly, but he was just a little bit too tall to be younger Shepard brother.

"Don't mind my sister," Troy King said from beside Katie, causing her to jump a little at his sudden appearance and also the realisation that the person Jodie was talking to was none other than Tim Shepard. "She's an idiot when she's drunk, but she's harmless."

Katie frowned at Troy, "I can't keep track of her and Rick, one minute they're on and the next they're off."

Troy laughed and said, "I hear ya," before clinking his beer bottle with Katie's spirit bottle. "Cheers."

They drank together and when an Elvis hit started playing, Troy managed to coax Katie into a dance, which quickly became three before Katie finally broke away from him, a little warm and breathless, and needing to find another drink to replace the last of Jodie's rum that she had swigged back during the last song. Standing by the bar, she breathed in deeply and waited for the spinning room to calm down a little as she looked around for somebody she knew. She glanced over at the space some of the Shepard boys occupied, simultaneously hoping and not hoping to find Susan sitting with Dale, but she was nowhere near them. Instead, Jean Farrell was sitting beside Dale with his arm around her shoulders as he spoke to Craig Chambers. Katie's stomach turned over at the sight of Craig, who was grinning along with whatever Dale was saying, as she remembered how she had caught him kissing Jean outside of this very building just over a year ago. She had been unable to hide her tears from Mike when she had asked him to take her home and the night had ended with Craig beaten black and blue.

Shaking her mind of that memory, Katie looked from Craig back to Dale, and a moment later Dale's dark eyes met Katie's for just a second or two and then moved past her to a doorway not far from where Katie stood. Following his line of sight just in time, Katie spotted Susan and Janet disappearing through the doorway and she quickly followed after them to find them in the kitchen.

Susan looked up at Katie when she entered the otherwise empty kitchen and gave her a glum little smile as Katie came to stand beside her, "I don't know whether to cry or throw my drink in his face, or hers."

"He's just trying to get a rise out of you," Janet insisted as Susan slumped against the kitchen counter.

"Well he's doin' a good job of it," Susan muttered miserably as she leant her head down on Katie's shoulder. "He knows I don't like Jean, not after the way she got around with Craig last year."

Katie bent her head slightly to rest against Susan's soft light brown hair for a few moments. A sense of calm washed over her as she drowned out whatever Janet was saying and just sat with her best friend. It was the only way she knew how to comfort her without talking about the matter and making it worse. But golly, Jean was a piece of work - moving in on Katie's boyfriend last year, and now having the nerve to be getting cosy with Dale when he had only just broken things off with Susan. And Susan had wanted so much to try and patch things up with Dale earlier that evening when they were getting ready. She had walked through the front door of Buck's confident, and now here she stood, defeated and sniffling back tears.

"Hey," Katie said, lifting her head up and pulling away from Susan so that she could look at her properly. "Jean's a piece of work, that's clear," she said, not entirely comfortable with how bitchy that sounded but a little too drunk to care, "Dale clearly still cares enough to want to get a rise out of you, so don't let her win."

"Easier said than done," Susan said, blinking a couple of times to rid her eyes of the tears that were welled up in them.

"You're here, aren't you?" Katie asked. "You're not out with Jeff tonight. You're here because you wanted to see Dale, not him. So go see Dale. Tell him that."

Susan stared at Katie for a couple of seconds, her eyebrows creased slightly as the simplicity of Katie's instructions sunk in.

"What if he doesn't want to talk to me?" she asked, slowly and unsure.

"Then he's a fool," Katie grinned, and a moment later Susan grinned back as somebody called out Katie's name from behind her.

"I'll leave you to take care of her," Susan said quietly and walked past Katie, giving her arm a quick squeeze as she went.

Katie watched Susan and Janet go as Jodie came in, walked over to the fridge and retrieved two beers. She twisted the tops off and handed one to Katie before jumping up a little to sit on top of the kitchen counter that Susan had been leaning against a minute before.

"I'm a bit drunk," Jodie giggled as she swayed slightly and took a sip of her beer.

"Good thing I drank the rest of your rum then," Katie smiled apologetically as she jumped up to sit beside Jodie.

Jodie shook her head, "Wasn't even mine," she laughed, "Someone gave it to someone who gave it to me who gave it to you."

Jodie leant back against the wall behind the counter when her laughter died out, and she sighed, closing her eyes and frowning. She looked disoriented to say the least and as Katie took her first sip of the fresh, cold beer in her hand she made a mental note to stop drinking after she finished this one. She was fine with the spinny effect the rum and beer was having on her now, but if she continued she'd soon be burning out like Jodie in no time.

"Are you alright?" Katie asked uncertainly.

"How do I help him, Katie?" Jodie moaned, her eyelids opening again to show her bloodshot, light blue eyes.

Katie glanced around her at the kitchen; unsure of whom Jodie was referring to. "Who?" she asked once she was certain there was nobody else in the room with them.

"Rick," she answered. "He's _so_ angry."

"Not always."

"No, when he's not angry he's just quiet and I don't know which is worse." Jodie was exaggerating, Katie thought. Katie lived with Rick, and she had seen him plenty of ways recently, not just angry and quiet. Though the few times Katie had seen Rick angry or quiet had been enough to scare her, like on the night of Mike's funeral. "He can't see that dwelling on what happened is just hurtin' everyone more."

"It's a bit hard not to dwell when his best friend just died in front of him," Katie bit back defensively, anger boiling up in her blood and coursing thickly through her veins.

Jodie laughed and grabbed Katie on both shoulders to shake her lightly, "See? Just, let it go."

Katie swatted Jodie's hands away and jumped down from the kitchen counter. "You don't know what you're talking about," she said, turning to face Jodie, "you weren't there." Her vision began to spot with red so deep and rich in colour that it made her think of blood - Mike's blood - and through it she could see that Jodie looked about as sick as Katie suddenly felt.

Jodie swayed a little and jumped down from the kitchen counter. "I think I might be sick," she mumbled and pushed past Katie to head out the kitchen's back door.

Katie sighed heavily once Jodie was gone and placed her beer down on the countertop before her hand shook so hard that she lost grip on the bottle altogether. She clenched and unclenched her fists as she tried to steady them and her breathing. She checked her watch and found that a couple of hours had passed since they had arrived at Buck's. In fact, it was almost midnight, and Katie wondered if Susan was going to get the new years kiss from Dale she had been hoping for. She wasn't sure that the advice she had given Susan was very smart, but in that moment she had hated seeing her friend feeling so defeated... She hoped she hadn't made things worse.

Katie ran a hand, still slightly shaky, through her curly mess of hair and sighed again, looking down at her beer and deciding to chase away Jodie's ignorant words with the drink.

Katie guzzled back the rest of her beer in a few long gulps and then put it back down on the counter top, shaking her head and telling the empty room, "She's just drunk."

In her own way, Jodie was trying to help, though she didn't realise that her help was more a hindrance than anything else.

"Who's drunk?" somebody asked from the doorway and Katie jumped.

Curly Shepard grinned smugly at her as he walked toward the fridge to grab a beer from Buck's backup stash.

"Leave me alone," Katie groaned, glaring up at the roof exasperated.

"I haven't even done anything yet," Curly laughed.

"Not you," she said hastily, "actually, yes you, and everyone else." She groaned again. "This night was meant to be fun." She turned to where Curly was stealing a beer from the fridge and slumped back against the kitchen counter again.

"You're not havin' fun?" he asked, popping the top off his beer and taking a sip.

"Dale's trying to upset Susan by being all over Jean, who was all over Craig when we were dating last year, and Susan has been all over me miserable about it and Jodie's outside being sick and I don't blame her after the drivel that just came out of her mouth, and I –"

"Just wanted a good night," Curly finished for her with a smirk on his face. "And instead you're having to deal with everybody else's drama."

Katie stared at him a moment, shocked at how much had spilled from her mouth – how much she had told him. She sighed, suddenly feeling exhausted.

"I should probably just call it a night," she said quietly, glancing at the kitchen doorway where she could see people dancing out in the heart of the party.

Curly followed her gaze as The Beatles started singing a song he hadn't heard in a couple of years.

"At least stay for a dance," he said, looking back at her as he put his beer down on the counter top, admiring the purple shadow on her eyelids, or more so, the way they made her hazel eyes glitter.

"I have," she said, "I had three dances with Troy earlier." She didn't know why she made a point of telling him who she had danced with, maybe to keep him at bay. A feeling of nervousness niggled away in her gut, the same way it had when she'd talked to him at Terry's party.

"Before everyone else's drama got to you," he tried to convince, "you should at least leave in a better mood than what you're in now."

She didn't say anything back to that; she just looked at him, her face slack, but her eyes wary. Yet when he stepped toward her, she didn't make a break for it and leave him in the dust. And when he put his hands on her waist, she didn't shove them away. After a moment she even reached up and placed her own timid hands on his shoulders, and they began to sway along with the music playing distantly in the other room.

Katie realised as she leant into him, her head resting ever so lightly on his chest, that he smelt like cigarettes, just as he had a couple of weeks ago at Terry's party. Her dad had always smelt of smoke. Rick still did, and that had rubbed off on Mike while he was still alive, too. Curly smelt like contentment, and safety, and when he wrapped his arms further around her she lost herself.

She forgot where she was, _who_ she was, who she was dancing with and all the reasons why she shouldn't have been dancing with him. And she was happy with that. She was happy with forgetting about it all, even if it would only last the length of a song.

And Curly was happy to let her stay the way she was for as long as she needed. They were alone and surely a dance couldn't be too harmful. He had a feeling it was calming her, too, and he knew she had been the furthest thing from calm when he had found her here in the kitchen, clenching and unclenching her small fists. He learnt from his mum a long time ago that not much couldn't be solved by a hug for women. Men were another story.

When the song ended and the music was replaced by shouted numbers, Katie pulled back slightly and looked up at Curly. His eyes were dark and analysing as he looked back at her, and she admired the way his long, black eyelashes cast shadows under his eyebrows. His eyes flicked down to her lips and, realising the question they were asking, she took a small step back out of his hold. The bubble they had formed around them broke and she felt the sudden urge to rewind the past couple of minutes so that the song didn't have to end, thinking that if it were any other boy she knew making her feel like this she probably would have kissed him by now.

"I should go," she said, just loud enough for him to hear her over the shout of the final number in the countdown to the new year.

A second later she was gone, leaving Curly to wonder if he had dreamed it all or if he'd really just been a second away from kissing Katie Thomas. When he realised that he had indeed been that close, he swore under his breath and grabbed his beer and chugged some down.

"Curly!" Glenn called out, rushing into the kitchen. "Angel's out front askin' for ya."

"What's she want?" he asked, rolling his eyes at having been summoned.

"She's sick, man," Glenn said and Curly put down his beer and followed him out the front of the party.

As he walked through the entrance he managed to get a glimpse of Katie tugging her coat on over her dress and saying something to a girl they went to school with. He followed Glenn down the steps of the front porch and down the side of Buck's a little way until he saw Angela, leaning up against the tyre of a car with her head in her hands.

"You've gotta be kiddin' me, Angel," Curly groaned, crouching down in front of her to look at her evenly.

"I'm sorry, Curly," she cried, her black eye make-up trailing down her cheeks with her tears.

"Go get Tim," Curly told Glenn, who took off back inside as Curly turned back to Angela. "He's the one you're gonna want to apologise to," he warned.

"I mean it," she sobbed, grabbing the front of Curly's shirt to pull him closer and holding on for dear life. "I didn't mean to, I messed up."

"What're you talkin' about?" Curly asked, annoyed as he glanced around him and caught sight of Katie again, this time as she walked past him with another girl beside her, presumably headed for their car. Their eyes met for one fleeting second, and then she was walking away and he was looking back at Angela.

"If I had've known, I wouldn't have. I swear," her whole body shook something fierce between her sobs. "I didn't know Arnie would, I didn't think."

Curly felt as though something hard had hit him in the face as it dawned on him that his kid sister was in this state because she felt guilty. She blamed herself for what had happened, and Curly couldn't say he hadn't blamed her himself either. But she was tough; he hadn't expected it to faze her so much.

Softening, Curly moved to sit down beside her and slung an arm around her shoulders. She leant into him and cried into his shirt. For the first time, he considered holding Arnie responsible for his actions instead of his sister for manipulating the situation.

"It's okay," he said quietly, squeezing her shoulder in a way that he hoped would be reassuring. "It ain't your fault."

She cried even harder at that as Tim approached the scene. He came to a stop in front of the car Curly and Angela were leant up against and cussed under his breath.

"Let's get outta here," he said, fishing his keys out of the pocket of his jeans, "this night blows."

 _When did everything fall apart?_

 _When did the nightmares start?_

 _Why is it so hard_

 _To find a way to begin again_


	5. Part Two

**Author's Note:** A big thank you for your reviews, follows, favourites, etc. I'm blown away whenever I see how many people have read these chapters, so thanks! _Gigi_ , I'm so glad you're enjoying the characters and their interactions, particularly with the supporting characters. They're sometimes easier and more fun to write than the main ones lol! On your note about The Dingo being bombed last chapter, I just added that in there for a bit of continuity - I read somewhere a while back that there was some reference in one of S.E. Hinton's books to The Dingo being firebombed. I don't think there will be much more on that in the rest of the story.

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from Paramore's song, Part Two. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 _ **Monday, 6 January 1969**_

 _What a shame, what a shame we all remain_

 _Such fragile, broken things_

 _A beauty half betrayed_

 _Butterflies with punctured wings_

"How was Buck's on new years?" Bradley asked once Katie was in the passenger seat of his car and he was reversing out of her driveway.

They were headed back to school for the first day of the year's third term and Katie felt her stomach knot nervously at the thought of seeing Susan for the first time since she had left Buck's party the week before. When Katie had left it had seemed as though Susan had gotten what she'd hoped would come from the night; Dale. But the two girls hadn't spoken since and Katie was uneasy about the possibility of her own bad, drunken advice gluing Susan and Dale back together. She wanted Susan to be happy, of course, but Dale was hardly the boy for the job. And she was even more unsure about whether or not to tell Susan that she had somehow wound up dancing with Curly Shepard in Buck's kitchen just before she had gone home.

For a moment, as the clock ticked down to midnight, Katie had thought Curly was about to kiss her. But it hadn't happened, though Katie thought that might have been more because she left so quickly rather than the Curly-wanting-to-kiss-her scenario being a figment of her imagination. But regardless of whether it didn't happen because Curly hadn't wanted to kiss her or because she left before he got a chance to do it, it simply just had not happened. It was nothing. It certainly wasn't anything worth reporting to her best friend. If she had wanted to kiss Curly back then perhaps that would be friend-worthy news, but she hadn't.

"It was alright, nothing special," Katie lied as she remembered Jodie's slurred speech about everybody needing to get over Mike dying, and she hadn't forgotten the way Jodie had looked up at Tim Shepard in one of the corners of the party.

She hadn't said anything to Rick about it yet and he hadn't asked. Rick and Jodie were all over the place, and Katie knew enough about what was going on between Rick and Tim's gangs to know that telling Rick his girlfriend had looked to be flirting with his enemy would only add fuel to the fire.

"No dramas?" Bradley asked, glancing at Katie carefully as he drove toward the school. "I heard some of the Shepard boys were there, they didn't try anything on with you or your friends, did they?"

Katie shook her head and tried to shove thoughts of Curly out of her mind. "No," she answered again, "I think Susan and Dale might've reconciled, though."

Bradley snorted. "Jeff's gonna be in a foul mood today then."

Katie cracked a grin. "What's his deal? He's not exactly nice to her, what does he care who she's with?"

"He's in love," Bradley replied in a breathy, mocking tone, "but too thick in the head to realize it."

Katie laughed with Bradley and soon enough they were pulling up in a vacant spot in the school's parking lot. Katie spotted Susan instantly, who had also spotted Bradley's car as it turned into the parking lot and was now walking away from Dale and a few of the Shepard boys and heading toward Katie and Bradley as they climbed out of Bradley's car.

"I gotta find Jeff," Bradley said, giving a small wave to Susan before turning to Katie, "I'll catch you at lunch."

"Okay," Katie nodded and Bradley made to step closer to her, but seemed to change his mind at the last second. He frowned slightly and started away from Katie as Susan finally caught up to her. Katie watched Bradley walk away for a couple of moments, his frown contagious.

"What's wrong?" Susan asked, looking from Katie to Bradley's back and then back to Katie.

"Nothing," Katie said, shaking her head to clear it of Bradley and looking at Susan for the first time since Buck's party last Wednesday night. "I assume things went well with Dale last week?" she asked, glancing over to where the Shepard boys were gathered around one of their cars, Dale and Curly among them.

"You could say that," Susan responded, visibly trying to stifle the small smirk that was creeping across her lips. For one paranoid moment, Katie thought that Susan was smirking because she knew about what had happened with Curly at the new years eve party - maybe he had told his friends, and Dale had told Susan - but Katie quickly rid herself of those thoughts. Again, there was nothing to tell. "I've been wanting to ask how you went dealing with Jodie," Susan said, changing the subject as a blush worked its way across her cheeks.

Katie groaned. "Did you see her holed up in a corner with Tim Shepard at one point?"

Susan's eyes widened as the two girls began walking toward the school, the bell almost about to sound. "No!" she exclaimed. "Are you sure it was them?"

She remembered thinking that Tim was Curly for a moment there before she realized he stood about an inch too tall to be Curly, but apart from that small difference in height the two brothers had some striking similarities.

"I'm sure," Katie nodded grimly. "But maybe if you didn't see it then nobody else did and Rick will never have to find out." Susan gave Katie a doubtful look and Katie quickly continued. "It was probably nothing anyway, they were just talking."

"Clearly it's a bit more than nothing if it's got you suspicious."

"I'm not suspicious," Katie said quickly. "It just doesn't sit entirely right with me. Regardless of whether she and Rick are back together or not, where's her loyalty? She's worried about Rick as it is, and she knew and liked Mike... How can she stand to be around the person that probably gave the go ahead for Mike to be shot?"

Susan was quiet for a couple of moments as they climbed the front steps and walked through the main entrance of the school. "You know I don't believe that's what happened," she responded finally. "I really doubt it was something they all planned together. But if they were just talking, then chances are nobody would have given them a second thought, especially with how drunk everybody was. I know you don't want to be the one to tell Rick about it, but maybe nobody else will either and he never has to know, like you said. It was probably harmless." Katie remembered Jodie's brother, Troy King, saying the same thing; _she's an idiot when she's drunk, but she's harmless_. "She didn't say anything to you about Tim when you were alone together in the kitchen?"

"No," Katie replied, coming to a stop by her locker and opening it to grab the textbooks for the morning's classes out. "Just that she's worried about him. She thinks he's either angry or quiet these days and she doesn't know which is worse."

Susan bit her lip as she pulled out her own textbooks from her locker and closed it. "And what do you think?"

"I think she doesn't know what she's talking about," Katie huffed as they walked the short distance to their first classroom of the day. "She said we should just _let go_ of what happened to Mike." Katie could feel a fire burning up inside of her as she told Susan about it, her anger boiling up in her brother's defense like it had back in Buck's kitchen. "Believe me, if I could click my fingers and just get over it, I would. And so would Rick. There's a process to this," she added, thinking back to the months after her dad had left herself, Rick and their mum for a new and improved version of their family. The aching had seemed like it would never end, and truthfully it hadn't. Even now, years after the fact, Katie's chest still squeezed unbearably tight at the thought of her dad.

"Yeah, I know," Susan answered softly and silence fell between the two girls as they walked into their first class and took their seats at the same desks they normally sat at.

Nothing else needed to be said as Katie and Susan pulled out their homework from their bags and waited for the class to begin. Katie knew that Susan understood the process she was talking about all too well. Her own dad had passed away when she was still quite young, and whenever Katie thought about it she always felt a pang of guilt. At least if Katie decided one day in the future that she wanted to see her dad again then maybe that could be possible, but that possibility would never be an option for Susan.

The teacher checked his watch and began greeting the class, asking the students to prepare for the lecture by opening up their textbook to a certain page. Katie and Susan sat expectantly as they waited for the bell to sound and the class to begin. When the bell did ring, Curly, Dale and Glenn slipped into the classroom at the last minute and silently took their seats. Katie watched Curly give the displeased teacher a cheeky grin as he followed Glenn into the classroom, but then his eyes landed on Katie and she quickly looked down at her textbook, eager to avoid his gaze.

The teacher began his lecture when the three boys were seated and not long after that they were left to work through a series of questions among themselves so long as their noise level remained quiet. With History easily being Katie's best subject it didn't take long for Katie and Susan to work through the questions and finish with ten minutes to spare. The rest of the class was still working on the questions and Katie found her eyes sliding over to where Curly sat a row in front of them on the other side of the classroom.

He sat between Dale and Glenn and didn't seem to be doing any work. He was whispering to Glenn, mischief all over his face, and when Glenn quickly punched him in the arm while the teacher wasn't looking it seemed as though it physically pained Curly not to burst into laughter. Instead, he lifted his arms and stretched them above his head as he lent back in his seat, his lips a tight smirk. As he stretched further back he glanced around him at the rest of the class whose heads were still down as they wrote in their notebooks. His eyes scanned until they met Katie's and sent a jolt through her when she realized suddenly that not only had she been staring, but she had been _caught_ at it, too.

She quickly looked back down at her notebook, letting her blonde hair fall across the side of her face like a curtain shielding her from light. She kept her head down until the bell rang, at which point she got up and rushed out of the classroom so quickly Susan almost had to jog to keep up. All the while Curly watched her as he packed up his own textbook, which he'd hardly looked at during the lesson, and made for the door with Glenn and Dale at his side.

A swell of confidence surged up inside of him as he watched her hurry up the corridor to her next class, glad that he had another two classes with her today. How long had she been watching him before he had noticed? Had she been picturing the two of them in Buck's empty kitchen, hands on each other, dancing slowly to a Beatles song? It would have been the most normal thing in the world, dancing with a pretty girl at a party, if that pretty girl's brother wouldn't gladly put a bullet in his own brother's head like Arnie had done with Mike.

Still, that didn't mean he couldn't at least inwardly enjoy the pink blush that covered what little of her cheeks he could see behind the hair that had fallen over her face, and he couldn't help wondering, particularly because she _had_ been watching him, if she was regretting pulling away from him so suddenly last week, before he'd had a chance to lean down and kiss her. And by God, he had wanted to kiss her in that moment. Her small hands on his broad shoulders, her soft body against his... He was only human, and a teenage boy at that. Though the urge wasn't as strong now as he and his friends followed her into their next class a few minutes later, he couldn't help but hope that he would catch her looking again.

He spent his next two classes keeping an eye on her and enjoying the thrill that surged up inside of him the few times that she looked up at him, either because she sensed his eyes on her or because she wanted to look at him just as much as he now wanted to look at her. Each time she looked away as quickly as she had looked up, pink creeping over her face, but the last time their eyes locked long enough for her to catch his grin. He almost gave her a wink, too, but didn't want to taunt her. She was obviously uncomfortable with his attention otherwise she would have let him kiss her on new years eve – unless she just didn't like him at all, which was of course possible but again, doubtful. They had always gotten along well enough before, and it suddenly occurred to Curly that he had no idea why he hadn't taken interest in her before Mike died. It sure would have been easier to kiss her back then.

 _Still there are darkened places deep in my heart_

 _Where once was a blazing light_

 _Now there's a tiny spark_

That night Curly sat on the couch in front of the TV, watching the news and eating some of the pasta Angela had cooked for dinner because their mom was working late again. Tim was out probably lifting some hubcaps for the gang and Angela was bringing her bowl downstairs to the kitchen after having eaten up in her room. Curly could hear her rinsing her bowl out in the kitchen sink and a minute later she came out into the lounge room and flopped herself down in the armchair to Curly's right.

"You can wash my bowl, too, if you want," Curly teased, setting his fork down in his empty bowl and leaning forward to put the bowl down on the coffee table. Angela had been less annoying since new years eve – she was always annoying to some degree, but she had dropped a bit of the attitude with him, at least.

"Arnie's trial starts on Wednesday," she replied glumly, ignoring Curly's comment about the bowl.

Curly squinted his eyes at her suspiciously. "How do you know that?"

He hadn't heard anything more about Arnie and what was going on with him since the newspapers stopped writing about the incident at The Dingo about a week after it happened. He was surprised at first that only Tim was hauled down to the cop station to "answer a few questions", since Curly was the one that had actually been involved in the altercation, having punching Mike before Arnie pulled a gun on him. But when he thought about it more, it wasn't that surprising. Anybody who didn't know the score had disappeared inside The Dingo at the first sign of trouble. The rest that remained behind were either gone or leaving by the time the police got to the scene, or they knew well enough that you never talked to a cop. The only reason Tim had been hauled in was because the cops were aware of Arnie being one of Tim's boys.

"I went down to the police station," she shrugged.

"You saw him?" Curly asked incredulously.

"No," she answered quickly, "no, he ain't just in the cooler, Curly. He's eighteen in a couple of weeks..." She looked at Curly then, her dark blue eyes reflected in his. "They're gonna lock him away for a long time."

"Yeah," Curly sighed and Angela looked away again. A few minutes of silence followed as the two stared blankly at the TV screen showing highlights still from Ohio State winning the Rose Bowl game on new years day.

"I thought about goin' to see him," Angela spoke again, still staring at the TV, "or goin' to the trial maybe." She laughed a little, staring down at her left thumb twisting the ring on her left ring finger around and around. "I'm his wife; I should probably be there to support him, y'know." She stopped twisting the ring and covered her left hand with her right. "But I thought maybe it was best if I didn't see him. I'm the whole reason he's in this mess after all."

"No you ain't," Curly sighed again. "If it's your fault then some of it must be mine too, for goin' looking for Mike with him and starting the whole fight when we found him, but I sure as hell didn't put that gun in Arnie's hand. He's locked up 'cause he went the wrong way about things, there ain't anything else to it."

Curly hoped that would cheer Angela up some. He felt guilty now for having initially blamed her for what happened. It only struck him now as he said the words that he could have just as easily blamed himself for not handling things better with Arnie that day, but it had always been easier to blame others than himself. He just wished he had have placed the blame on Arnie from the start because he was the one who deserved it ultimately, and after new years eve he felt sick at how rotten his own sister had been feeling about it all. He felt sick at the part he had played in her guilty-ridden state.

 _Come and find me dancing all alone_

 _To the sound of an enemy's song_

 _I'll be lost until you find me_

The rest of the week passed in as boring a fashion as the first week back at school usually went. Curly tossed Wednesday morning's newspaper in the trash before school, hoping that Angela hadn't bothered to look at it yet. Once again Mike's face was plastered on the front page, the face of the disturbed youth, the life lost due to senseless violence.

Katie treated the paper similarly as she made herself a bowl of cereal for breakfast. Her mom had brought the newspaper in before heading off to work earlier that morning and had left it out on the kitchen table. Katie thought her mom probably left it there thinking it would make Katie and Rick happy to see that Arnie was pleading guilty to the first degree murder and possession of unregistered firearms charges, but all it did was put Katie off her breakfast as she stared at Mike's smiling face.

Thursday passed, Friday came and the school day went, and Curly found himself out the front of Jay's by early evening, smoking cigarettes and talking trash with Dale, Glenn and a couple of other boys from the gang. Katie and Susan were inside at a booth, whispering and giggling as they slurped their milkshakes and waited for Bradley to show up to take Katie home. Susan had already told Dale that she would come out and see him once Bradley had arrived, but Curly could sense the tension in Dale as the minutes passed. He kept glancing over at the parking lot's entrance, waiting to see if Bradley would emerge from his car with Jeff in tow.

Curly didn't blame him for not wanting his girlfriend around a guy like Jeff, especially after the drama that had occurred because of Susan's flirting with him. Tim's words from the morning after the big fight at Terry's end of semester party a few weeks ago came to Curly's mind. He had told Dale that Susan didn't sound like too good of a girl for flirting with a Brumly boy, and though he agreed that Susan tended to stir up drama, his mind wandered to wondering what Tim would think about his own brother flirting with a girl so deep in with those Brumly boys. Because that was what he had been doing, wasn't it? He had been flirting when he had asked her to dance, and wasn't it even more scandalous that for a moment there he had wanted to go further, to actually kiss her?

But Tim had been flirting up his own perfect storm the same night as Curly. Wherever they were, if Curly was with his brother he knew to try and keep tabs on where he was or what he was doing. Being the leader of their gang brought a certain notoriety, and there was almost always someone who had a score to settle with Tim, so Curly had eventually learnt to stay on the defensive, to watch his back for him in case any trouble arose.

Sometimes it got him into more trouble instead of less, but this was how he had come to find his brother standing a little too close for comfort with Jodie King. Curly had heard that Jodie and Rick Thomas' crazy relationship was back on since Mike had died, but if Curly was wrong he suspected it would only be a matter of time before they did start going round again and when it happened Curly doubted Rick would like that Tim had been working on his girl about as much as he would like Curly wanting to kiss his sister.

"Hey," Dale spoke up, roughly nudging Curly in the ribs and nodding to where Bradley Simons was parking his car, and a second later he was climbing out of it and heading for the entrance of Jay's with Dennis McKay beside him.

Curly hadn't seen Dennis since Tim had beaten him and broken his nose for selling trips to a couple of kids on Shepard turf just after Christmas, and as the two Brumly boys came closer into the light from Jay's, Curly could see that his nose was still almost as crooked as it was just after Tim had smashed it across his face.

"Your nose still hurtin' McKay?" Dale called out as Dennis and Bradley walked past them toward the front doors. "Still looks pretty ugly, even without all the blood!"

Curly was ready for a fight should Dennis decide to turn around and try to break his nose for retaliation, since he was the one who had held Dennis in place while Tim punched the shit out of him, but all Dennis did was scowl and flip the boys the bird as Dale and the others howled with laughter. It might have hurt his ego to keep walking, but it was a smart idea to avoid a fight with five boys when he only had one other person to back him up.

The conversation among the boys changed directions and Curly continued to tune out and to watch with Dale as Dennis and Bradley approached the booth Katie and Susan were sharing. Susan quickly drank down the rest of her milkshake when she noticed the two boys approaching and when they came to a stop at their booth, Susan got up, said her goodbyes to them and Katie and headed for the front doors. She pushed them open and came to stand between Curly and Dale, wriggling her way under Dale's arm and blinking up at him with a goofy grin on her face. Grudgingly, Curly supposed it was good that Dale returned the grin instead of giving her a cold glare or pushing her away.

Curly glanced back inside to see Dennis and Bradley now sitting in the booth with Katie, Dennis across from her and Bradley next to her, as she played with the straw in her milkshake and looked between Dennis and Bradley; obviously following a conversation Curly couldn't hear. Seeing her sitting beside Bradley, looking at him and listening to him, brought a question to mind that he hadn't considered, but really should have – had she not wanted to kiss him because he wasn't Bradley?

He remembered the way Bradley had touched her on the small of her back to steady her when she had wobbled after a few drinks at Terry's party last month. He could have steadied her a bunch of other ways, grabbing her arm for one, but he had grabbed her at the small of her back instead. But she hadn't liked that, had she? He could still remember the fleeting look of shock on her face upon his touch, and she had taken off outside without him just a moment afterward. Perhaps she didn't like Bradley the way Curly was beginning to suspect he liked her...

The front doors opened again and Bradley, Katie and Dennis walked out into the crisp evening air. The three walked off toward Bradley's car and paid no attention to the Shepards huddled nearby Jay's front doors, just as the Shepard's paid very little attention to them back. If anything were going to happen, it would have happened when Dale teased Dennis about his nose.

As Katie and the two Brumly boys neared Bradley's car, Dennis made to break away from the group and headed for the back seat. Katie made to follow his path to get to the front passenger seat, but Bradley stopped her with his cold hand on her wrist.

"Hey," Bradley spoke, his touch and words bringing Katie to a halt as she turned back slightly to face him. "I just wanted to ask quickly if you were plannin' on going to the drive-in tomorrow night?"

"Uh," Katie stopped for a second, glancing down at where Bradley's hand held Katie's wrist loosely. "Yeah," she said, looking back up at him and slowly pulled her wrist away, "Susan and I were talking about going together. Her sister's letting us take her car."

"Right," Bradley said, pulling his hand back and up to scratch the back of his head awkwardly as he glanced at his car.

Katie could sense the disappointment washing through him and felt terrible that the disappointment was because of her. "But I'll probably see you there," she continued in an attempt to make him feel better, "if you're planning on going, too."

Bradley looked back at Katie and gave her a smile as he dropped his hand from his head and proceeded to pull his car keys out of his jeans pocket. "Yeah, sounds good," he replied as he walked around to his driver's seat and pulled the car door open.

Katie followed suit and a minute later they were pulling out of the parking lot at Jay's and heading down the Ribbon.

Curly turned back to his group of friends once Bradley's car was out of sight, something shifting in his guts at the way Bradley had touched her. Again. Another small, fleeting touch that carried way too much.

Glenn was saying something to Dale and Curly tuned into their conversation, looking at the two boys as they talked, and from the corner of his eye he noticed Susan watching him. He looked at her properly, but she didn't look away embarrassed like Katie had been doing all week. She just quirked an eyebrow at him and the corner of her lips twitched. Her eyes twinkled with suspicion, but she didn't say anything and after a long moment of Curly wishing he was a mind reader, Susan finally turned her attention back to Dale and left Curly to try and catch up on whatever it was Dale was saying.

 _What a mess, what a mystery we've made_

 _Of love and other simple things_

Katie spent most of Saturday working on the small mountain of homework she had accrued over the first week back at school since the winter break, and when she finally felt as though she might go mad if she had to figure out one more algebra equation she decided to call it a day. It was getting close to five o'clock and Susan would be there in about half an hour to pick her up.

They were going to see some movie double at the drive-in tonight, but she knew she should probably brush out the knots in her hair and try to hide the bags under her eyes with make-up because nobody ever went to the drive-in to actually watch the films. They went to socialize, to smoke cigarettes and sneak swigs of liquor from hip flasks when the staff weren't watching. Some did choose to stay in their cars but more often or not those people were making out in the backseat and doing anything but actually paying attention to the movie.

Katie pulled her blonde hair from its bun and brushed it out, the thick hair shaping her face softly. She applied a bit of make-up to her face and picked out a blouse, coat and her favorite pair of pants, deciding with a quick glance out at the grey sky that it would be far too cold to get around in a dress or skirt tonight.

The front door squeaked loudly downstairs and Katie heard Susan shout a greeting out to the empty house. Her mom was at work and Rick hadn't been home since he left early last night – he had warned Katie that he wouldn't be home, though, which she was grateful for. Footsteps on the staircase sounded and a moment later Susan was standing in Katie's open doorway, grinning at her reflection in the mirror Katie stood in front of, shrugging her dark green coat on over the top of her clothes.

Katie watched Susan smile for a few moments until she decided that Susan wasn't going to explain herself unless prompted.

"What is it?" Katie asked, glancing at herself in the mirror and checking her mascara. "Did I smudge something?"

"No," Susan laughed, finally speaking. "I just have a feeling that someone has a few very specific feelings for you."

She grinned that stupid grin again and Katie turned around to look at her friend full on. "What are you talking about?" she asked, an apprehensive frown on her face.

Had Susan overheard or been told something by Dale that Curly had said about her? Surely that was the only reason she was so smugly enjoying withholding whatever information she had.

"I think you know," Susan teased, walking into Katie's bedroom further to sit on the end of her bed. "Bradley's been acting a little strange around you for a while now. Nothin' too obvious, but a few little things have stood out."

Katie sighed and her shoulders slumped as she released some of the tension she hadn't even realized had built up inside of her so quickly. "What do I do, Susan?" she groaned, sitting down on her desk chair and looking glumly at her best friend.

Susan lifted an eyebrow at her. "You're not interested in him?"

"No," Katie answered quickly. Too quickly. "I mean," she began, trying to lessen the harshness that one word had been said in, "I don't know. Maybe I do. I've always liked him, but that's because he's always been a friend..."

"And now he's changing and you're confused," Susan finished for her.

"Yeah," Katie replied, and a few seconds later she added, "I think he tried to ask me on a date yesterday."

"Really?"

"When he picked me up from Jay's, before we got in the car, he asked me if I had plans to go to the drive-in tonight. I told him I did, obviously, but I got the sense he would have asked me to go with him if I hadn't already made these plans with you."

"I could've just gone with Dale, you know," Susan said. "You didn't need to refuse because of me."

Katie looked down at her hands in her lap. "I was kind of glad for the excuse," she mumbled just loud enough for Susan to catch. Katie shook her head and looked back up at Susan again. "I don't want to encourage him if I'm not sure. It doesn't seem fair."

Susan nodded in agreement and silence fell between the pair. Katie could tell from the way Susan was chewing on her bottom lip that she was debating internally whether to say something else, but before Katie could tell her to spit it out Susan stood up.

"We'd better go if we want to be on time," she said and Katie stood with her and followed her out of the house and into her older sister's car.

By the time they made it to the drive-in and lined up at the concession stand the movie was already fifteen minutes in, but with the hesitant, stressful way Susan had driven the whole way there Katie was just glad to have made it there in one piece, the time was irrelevant.

 _Learning to forgive_

 _Even when it wasn't our mistake_

Curly gulped back a swig of bourbon from his flask and then buried it back in his pocket. He stood off to the side of the concession stand with Dale and a couple of the other Shepard boys. Tim and Pete were on the other side of the drive-in lot chatting to a couple of birds much like Glenn was doing a few feet away with a little brunette from the grade below them at school.

"It's fuckin' cold," Dale grumbled beside Curly as he dug his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket to further prove his point. "Ain't no point in me even bein' here if I can't even warm up in the backseat with a girl."

"You could," Curly grinned at Dale, "but I don't think Susan would be too happy about that."

Dale looked over to where Susan stood in line at the concession stand and cussed at Curly. "It'd teach her for flirtin' with Jeff fuckin' Griffiths."

Curly frowned. "Thought you were over that."

"How the fuck do you figure that, dipshit?" Dale asked, rounding on Curly.

"Piss off," Curly spat at him, "I'm just sayin' if you're not over it then what're you doin' back with her?"

Dale backed off a little and shrugged. Curly could see the scowl on his face even though it was pretty dark now. The lights from the concession stand were bright enough to illuminate his face and cast their long shadows over the concrete floor.

"Might as well not be," Dale muttered, waving his hand in Susan and Katie's direction where they now stood closer to the middle of the long line. "It's a Saturday night and she's here with Katie, not me."

Dale pulled a packet of smokes from his jacket pocket and lit two up, handing one to Curly as he watched Katie and Susan chatting. The two boys smoked in silence, Dale listening into the conversation a few of the other boys were having and leaving Curly to his thoughts.

It didn't take long for Katie to feel the burn of somebody's eyes on her and when Susan glanced past her to where Dale stood, Katie followed her gaze and found Curly's focused on her, again. Katie huffed and turned back to Susan, who was chewing on her bottom lip again.

"What?" Katie asked, wondering if Susan was looking at Dale or the way Curly was looking at Katie.

Susan looked back to Katie and shook her head. "Nothing," she answered. "Dale just doesn't look too happy."

Katie glanced back at Curly and Dale and both boys were now looking at the two girls, a sly grin on Curly's face and a nasty glare on Dale's. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Dale was probably grumpy at Susan for ditching him to hang out with Katie, which she had been doing more frequently over the past month with Katie refusing to have anything to do with the Shepard boys. She was grateful for Susan's loyalty, but she didn't like being the reason Susan was biting a crater into her bottom lip as she worried about what tantrum Dale might throw at her tonight.

"Look," Katie sighed, turning back to Susan. "I need to use the bathroom, and I told Brad I would see him some time tonight, too. I'll go tell Dale to take my place in line with you and I'll meet up with you later."

Susan's eyes lit up as she tried to mask her shock at Katie willingly offering to speak to Dale. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," Katie said, squeezing her friend's arm before taking a step away from her. "I'll see you later."

Katie turned and made a bee's line for the Shepard boys standing around not too far away. She tried to walk quickly so as to get the brief interaction over with before the wrong people had time to notice.

A surge of self-consciousness washed over her as she walked, her inner voice demanding to know what the heck she was doing. She told herself there was no harm in letting Dale know he had won this round with Susan, that she would only be brief and then she could enjoy the rest of her night away from Curly's watchful eyes.

She was doing this one small thing for Susan, she told herself, yet she felt a thrill of anticipation course down her spine when Curly and Dale ceased whatever they were saying to one another and focused on Katie coming to stop in front of them.

"What's goin' on, Brumly?" Dale smirked, his brown eyes shining in the light from the concession stand. "Your big brother give you permission to come over here?"

Katie made a point of not looking at Curly, glaring straight at Dale instead. "I don't need permission from anyone," she shot at him. "I just wanted you to know that I have some people to see tonight and my friend could use your company, so you can stop sulking and making her feel bad for being a good friend to me now."

Dale stood up straight and stepped forward toward Katie slightly, looming over her with eyebrows drawn tight over his eyes. He obviously hadn't liked Katie's last comment about him sulking, and regret washed over her as she retreated back a step. This boy was dangerous, she reminded herself, he had helped beat two of Rick's buddies up just a week ago.

"What did you –" he began to say as Glenn quickly stepped away from his girl to grab Dale by the shoulder. He had acted faster than Curly, who was still processing the nerve Katie had to aggravate Dale. She was so small, and he thought he saw her realization of that in her eyes when Dale had stepped toward her.

"Cool it," Glenn said firmly, and Dale redirected his glare at Glenn, then a moment later he shrugged his shoulder free of Glenn's hand and took off past Katie toward where Susan was still standing in line.

Glenn and Curly shared a mutual look of dislike for their friend's quick temper before Glenn turned back to his girl and Curly looked back to Katie, who returned his look this time. He looked so cool and unfazed, one hand in his jacket pocket and another holding a cigarette to his lips, inhaling and exhaling, still looking at her through the smoke. It was like he was waiting for her to say something, looking so expectantly at her. But she didn't know what he expected, what on earth she should say to him now that she had the opportunity.

His eyes on her were analyzing, and when a heat began to crawl over her skin that had nothing to do with the warmth of her coat, she decided to walk away before he could see her cheeks stained pink. She turned to her left and started walking off to the bathroom building on the other side of the concession stand, leaving Curly standing there on his own, finishing his cigarette and willing his legs to move, in one direction or another.

He could go and stand with the other boys, join in their conversation and hunt some action with them, or he could go now, while they weren't paying any attention to him, and catch up to Katie. He didn't even know why he was considering following Katie as an option, and he definitely didn't know what he would say to her, since he had failed to think of anything in the seconds before she had turned tail and left. He just wanted another moment, another chance, another look at her hazel eyes... It was as if he was being pulled by invisible rope to where she had disappeared around the corner of the concession stand.

Without even glancing at the other guys, he dropped his finished cigarette to the concreted floor, ground it out with his shoe, and walked off casually. He made it around the corner to the front of the bathroom block just as Katie was coming out of the ladies' room. She stopped short when she looked up and noticed Curly standing ahead of her. She glanced around and they were the only ones standing there; everybody else was out by the concession stand or in seats or cars watching the movie. Katie could hear the dialogue of one of the actors coming from speakers not too far away.

"Do you have some kind of problem with your eyes?" she bit at Curly, looking back at him and placing a hand on her left hip. She had spent her minute or two in the bathroom inwardly bashing herself for even standing there and indulging in his stupid watchful tendencies, and thinking of all the snippy things she should have said to him to end them. "Because you sure are staring a lot lately, and now following me, too."

"If I remember rightly you were starin' at me first," Curly smirked back at her. He could tell she was trying to take control of the situation by the snotty tone of her voice and hand on her hip, but her hair hung softly around her pale face and her coat matched the color of her eyes and it was impossible not to focus on how perfect she looked right then and there.

"Don't flatter yourself," she quipped back, "it was a passing glance. And you've been staring at me for days now."

"And you've been checking to make sure."

Katie scoffed. "Because I can feel your annoying eyes on me, not because I take some sick pleasure in a hood checking me out." She had called him a hood before, but only in passing jokes in the corridors at school. She had never petulantly spat it at him like this, and his temper flared at it now.

"You're actin' pretty high and mighty tonight for a girl who was dancing with this hood just last week," Curly responded and Katie glared back at him, stumped.

He was right, she had danced with him a week ago and now she was acting too good to even be standing there talking to him right now. "Just leave me alone," she said and turned to walk off.

Curly watched her go a moment and then called out, "Your brother ain't any better, either, Princess!"

She kept walking as if she hadn't even heard him and Curly turned away, a sudden urge to punch the brick wall of the bathrooms coming over him, but he thought better and instead kicked at the dirt ground just off the concrete path he was standing on.

 _I question every human_

 _Who won't look in my eyes_

 _Scars left on my heart formed patterns in my mind_

Katie was furious, though she knew logically that she had no right to be. She had acted like a snob and he had simply called her out on it. She was from the east side, she was a greaser; her brother was the leader of a gang! She was the furthest thing from a snob, yet she had still acted like a snotty soc back there with Curly. She told herself that he was worse than her brother, than Bradley and Jeff, because she knew that he had played a role in beating Dennis and Jimmy over the winter break and because he had been buddies – family, even – with Mike's murderer, but again, logically she knew she was being biased. As much as she hated Curly alluding to the side of Rick that she preferred not to see, she knew beneath everything that her brother had definitely played his own role in criminal acts, too. You didn't get to lead a gang of hoods without being the best hood of them all.

As Katie walked away she scanned the crowd of people milling about around her. Susan was no longer in line at the concession stand, and Katie hoped that Dale wouldn't take out his annoyance at Katie on Susan.

Not too far away, Katie spotted a few guys from Rick's gang and the River Kings standing in a group near the last row of seats - Bradley, Jeff and Troy King among them. She approached the group and came to a stop beside Bradley and across from Troy.

"Hey," Troy greeted her enthusiastically, "hope you weren't feelin' as bad as Jodie new years morning."

Katie shook her head, ignoring the fire that had grown in the pit of her stomach and returning his grin. "Nah, just a bit of a headache. What's she up to tonight, anyway?"

Troy shrugged, "Off with your brother I expect. She's been with him most of this week," he said, shrugging again.

One of his buddies said something to him then and he turned his attention away from Katie as she glanced down at the flask in Bradley's hand beside her.

"You sharing?" she asked, nudging Bradley softly in the ribs with her elbow, nodding at his flask.

He grinned down at her; an easy, light grin that told her he was about as buzzed as she suddenly wanted to be when he handed the flask to her. She unscrewed the lid and tipped her head back, guzzling down as much of the liquor as she could without gagging and spitting it out of her mouth in one large spray. She swallowed and handed the flask back to Bradley, an appalling look on her face as she felt the liquor burn a trail down her throat and into her stomach, dampening the angry flames that had ignited there during her argument with Curly.

Bradley laughed at Katie's face. "You sure are a girl," he teased as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and shook her. She wobbled a little and lent into him, but instead of pulling away she decided to just go with it, hoping fleetingly that Curly would see. He was worse than Rick and Bradley and their friends. He was definitely worse.

 _Like the moon we borrow our light_

 _I am nothing but a shadow in the night_

 _So if you let me I will catch fire_


	6. Losing Control

**Author's Note:** Thanks again to those who reviewed last chapter, favourited, alerted, etc for this story. Here is the beginning of the end...

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from Escape the Fate's song, Lose Control. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 _ **Saturday, 11 January 1969**_

 _I'm just like a fly on the wall_

 _Tear off my wings and I'll take my last breath_

 _And all my aspirations are dead_

 _Because I've ripped them to shreds_

It hadn't taken much convincing from Bradley and the other guys to convince Katie to go back to Buck's with them after the movie double finished at the drive-in. Once she had gotten some alcohol into her system she was happy to go anywhere, relieved at having something to distract her from the stupid argument she'd had with Curly during the first film that played.

They had arrived just after ten and been there about an hour when Rick turned up with Jodie and a few other boys at his side. Katie, who at this point had had more than enough to drink, felt a wave of affection for her brother and pushed past a couple of people in the crowded place to engulf him in a hug. She was drunk, but she didn't care because for the moment she felt happy. She was laughing, having fun and feeling unbelievably light, but her nerves stood on end when she noticed the rigidity of Rick's hug and the way his hand on her back touched her stiffly, digging his fingertips into the material of her light blue blouse, which had been revealed when she had shed her coat upon arriving at Buck's.

"What's wrong?" she mumbled to him, pulling away and assessing his face.

The bags under his eyes were more prominent tonight than most others, making his face appear gaunter than she was used to lately.

He didn't even look at her when he answered, "Nothin', just stay back," and when he moved past her she followed his direction with her eyes.

She thought to herself she shouldn't have been too surprised to see him headed for where the Shepards sat around a table on the other side of the room. Tim had been there when she arrived and his boys from the drive-in had followed just a few minutes after them, Curly among them.

"Hey!" Katie called after Rick, a sick, desperate feeling gripping her stomach.

She generally tried not to make a habit of seeing her brother get into fights, but one was coming very soon and she could either stand back and watch one unfold or she could try and diffuse her brother's dangerous mood.

A few of the boys Rick had entered with followed behind him with Jodie, and when they passed her she grabbed Jodie by the arm to stop her.

"What's going on?" she asked, glancing from Jodie to where Rick had come to a stop in front of the table the Shepard boys sat around.

Jodie just shook her head and continued to move forward to the front of the scene, her eyebrows knit together closely in anticipation of something bad.

Tim stood up from his seat and moved around his table toward Rick while the rest of his buddies stood up, too, ready right away for a fight.

"We have a problem," Katie heard Rick say as she inched forward, squeezing and pushing her way through the group of people that had stopped and gathered around to witness the confrontation. "Several, actually."

"Rick," Katie started again as she squeezed up beside her brother and tried to stand in front of him.

She didn't have a plan; she didn't even have a clue what she was going to do. All she could process about the spinning room was that her brother was in the mood to get himself into trouble and she hoped she could deflate the situation before he hurt anybody or got hurt himself. Panic was squeezing her stomach so hard she thought she might be sick once all of this was over.

She got to where she wanted to be, in front of him and partially blocking Tim from view, and just as she raised her hands to place on his chest in a stop motion he lifted his left hand up and brought it over to place it on the front of her left shoulder, and then tried to push her to the side. It wasn't the most forceful push in the world, but with how drunk Katie was it was enough to cause her to stumble.

It felt to her as though it happened so slowly, but still too quickly for her do anything to help herself. The push on her left shoulder sent a ripple effect through her whole body as she twisted to the left from the force of Rick's push. She felt the top half of her body tipping out and tried to move her feet to balance out her body, but one foot tripped over the other and she went tumbling forward away from her brother and toward an abandoned table to the right of Tim.

She realized when her forehead connected with the edge of the hard, wooden table that her arms would have been better off in front of her to catch herself against the table instead of flailing around at her sides, pointlessly trying to balance herself still. Her head snapped upward as she fell the distance from the edge of the table and landed on the ground.

Distantly she could hear a girl shouting her name, but all she could see was a blur. Her eyes fell closed shut and a vision rose up from deep within her memory of her mom being struck, spinning around and landing heavily against the stairs at the bottom of the staircase in their home. She couldn't see her father, but she remembered feeling his presence standing over her mom just out of sight as she and Rick sat at the top of the staircase, their eyes wide at having witnessed more than they had anticipated when they had come out of their bedrooms to listen in on the argument…

"Katie!" Hands were grabbing at her and she opened her eyes, the whole room rushing into perspective so quickly that it overwhelmed her, completely disoriented.

She tried to focus on who was closest to her. Susan was at her side, her hands cradling Katie's head and neck, and Jodie was leaning over her, inspecting her face.

"She's fine," Jodie yelled over her shoulder, "she's fine."

Katie groggily leaned forward and Jodie grabbed at her shoulders to steady her. Katie's eyes locked on Rick, who stood where he had been a few seconds earlier staring back at her, his eyes wide and bewildered.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Curly exclaimed, stepping closer toward Rick from where he stood by Tim. "That's your fuckin' sister, man," he said as Tim's arm stretched out across Curly's chest to stop him going any further.

"Let's take this outside 'fore you go and hit your girlfriend next," Tim said darkly, glancing over at where Jodie was helping Katie to sit further up.

Katie felt something warm trickling over her eyebrow and onto her eyelid, and a second later her vision started to blur again. As Rick turned to walk back out of the building the way he had come in, and everybody else began to follow him, Katie lifted her hand and wiped at her eye. When she pulled it back her hand was red with blood.

"C'mon," Susan said, looking at Katie then at Jodie. "Upstairs," she told Jodie, "to the bathroom." And then the two girls had Katie by the underarms and were hauling her to her feet.

They supported her as she found her feet again and let them steer her up the stairs and into the bathroom. Susan sat her down on the closed toilet seat while Jodie locked the door behind them, grabbed the toilet roll from its holder, ripped a decent amount of paper from it and ran it under the water from the sink tap for a second.

"What's going on?" Katie asked blearily as Jodie handed Susan the fistful of damp toilet paper and Susan bent down to dab it over Katie's left eye, instructing her to close it. Katie did as she was told and looked at Jodie expectantly with her good eye. Jodie looked away guiltily and Katie asked again, her voice rising, "Why the hell did that just happen?"

"I was talking to Tim," Jodie answered quickly, looking around the bathroom at everything but Katie, "on new years eve. We were here and Rick wasn't, and Tim and I got talkin' and I hadn't spoken to him since the whole thing with Mike," she paused for a breath as Susan pulled the paper away from Katie's eye and started wiping at the trail of blood across her eyebrow and forehead. "I accused him of being the reason Arnie did what he did because that's what Rick thinks happened, you know? He believes it _so_ much. But Tim told me differently, and then all day and night Rick and I were just having such a good time, he seemed happier than he's been in ages and I thought maybe I could convince him, stop this whole problem between him and Tim before it got any worse, but…" she stopped and glanced at Katie nervously.

Katie was silent for a long time, just sitting there and looking at Jodie as Jodie raked her fingers through the length of her hair. Susan made it to the top of Katie's forehead, to the source of all the blood, and when she touched the wet paper to it Katie winced away and turned the pain into fuel for her temper that was quickly flaring up.

"But you just made it worse!" she yelled at Jodie from the toilet seat. "You idiot!" she seethed, getting up to stand in front of Jodie, her face just inches from Jodie's as she ignored the way the room had begun to spin again. "If you didn't know that telling him you'd had a nice and cozy conversation with Tim Shepard was gonna set him off, you're an idiot!"

"I didn't mean to –"

"I saw you!" Katie screamed, blood rushing through her veins to her head as the room spun more and more violently. "I saw you on news years eve, and I didn't like the look of it but I _knew_ that telling Rick about it right now wasn't even an option, and now you've done it and he's out there," she swung her arm around to motion toward the general direction of the front door downstairs, "he's out there," she said again, blood pooling in her eyelid. She wiped at it with her hand before burying her head in both of her hands, "Oh God, I have to get down there." She looked back up and stumbled blindly for the bathroom door, but Susan's hands grabbed at her shoulders again and guided her back to the toilet seat.

"You have to let Susan clean your–" Jodie started to say.

"Get out," Katie interrupted, finding it difficult to understand why Jodie was even in the bathroom to begin with. When Jodie hesitated, Katie yelled at her to get out again and a moment later, after quickly handing Susan the roll of toilet paper that was still in her hands, she was gone, leaving Susan and Katie alone in the bathroom.

"You're gonna stay still and let me clean you up before anything else," Susan told Katie firmly as she ripped more paper from its roll and quickly wet it in the sink, discarding the last bunch of paper on the edge of the sink, its white completely soaked through with red.

She came back to Katie, whose breathing was evening out now. "I have to see Rick," Katie said quietly to Susan, looking into her eyes as light blue as a summer sky.

"No, not yet," Susan said, moving to press the wad of paper onto her eyelid again. "He's downstairs probably in a fight right now, there's nothing you could do to change that. He'll be fine though, he has his buddies with him." She dragged the paper up Katie's face. "This is gonna hurt a little bit now, but I need to clean the cut so I can see how bad it is."

She pressed the cold, wet paper onto the broken skin of Katie's forehead and Katie winced again and closed her eyes to the pain, but instead of pulling back like before she pushed her head forward _into_ the paper, finding that the pressure on the wound helped.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she focused on the image of her mom looking up at Katie and Rick at the top of the staircase, looking down upon the result of their father's blow. She hadn't thought of that night in a long time, but she could still vividly remember the shame in her mother's eyes when she realized that her two children had witnessed something they shouldn't have had to.

It struck Katie that she had always just assumed that her dad had taken off voluntarily right after that and never came back, but now she found herself wondering if her mum had forced him to leave instead.

 _Don't worry_ , she could hear her mom saying to her one night when she was tucked into bed, _we can still trust Ricky._

Katie opened her eyes and pulled her head away from the wad of paper in Susan's hand, no longer able to bare the constant stinging.

"He didn't mean it," Katie whispered to Susan, her eyes shining with tears. "Rick, he didn't mean to hurt me."

"I know that," Susan replied, "of course he didn't." She placed the wad back onto Katie's cut and continued to distract her from the pain of it. "I saw him right after and he was just as shocked as everyone else."

Katie nodded and a heavy sob wracked through her body as she began to cry.

"Hey, it's okay," Susan said, leaning forward and pulling Katie toward her with her free hand, pressing Katie's right cheek into the top of her chest and running a hand over her friend's back. "It'll be alright."

A minute or two passed and Katie's sobs turned to small hiccups when a knock came at the door.

"Occupied!" Susan called out as Katie moved away from Susan's hug to look up at the closed bathroom door.

"It's me," Dale said from the other side of the door.

"Keep this pressed against your head," Susan told Katie, pulling the bloody bunch of toilet paper away, ripping off a new length and pressing it into one of Katie's hands.

Katie did as she was told as Susan got up and unlocked the door. She swung it wide open so that the door now concealed Susan from where Katie sat on the toilet seat behind it.

"What?" Katie heard Susan say and Katie yelled out her own greeting.

"How's Rick?"

Dale gave Curly, who stood beside him leaning against the opposite door frame, a what-the-fuck look. Curly just rolled his eyes and shook his head. The guy had sent her – his own sister – flying into a table and the first thing out of her mouth was a question about his wellbeing?

"Uh, he got knocked out," Dale said.

Susan gave Dale an expectant look. "He's okay, though, right?"

"Oh yeah," Dale responded. "He was fine; his guys got him out of here pretty quick after that."

"Good," Susan said, "now can one of you go get me some ice or peas or something? Anything cold. And get Brad or Jeff up here, too."

"We ain't gettin' anybody up here," Dale bit back, shitty at Susan giving orders. "They all left."

"All of them?" Susan asked as Katie moaned from behind the door.

Susan glanced behind the door at Katie just in time for her to see her standing, lifting open the toilet seat and beginning to vomit.

Dale scrunched up his face and looked at Curly at the sound of what was happening in there. Susan looked back at him and he remembered her question, nodding a yes.

"We need to get her back to my place," Susan told the two boys. "My sister can check her out and make sure she doesn't need stitches."

"One of us could just do that," Dale said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, but not the right answer if the look Susan gave him was anything to go by.

"Scars on girls faces aren't tuff, Dale," she said slowly as Katie's retching came to a stop, followed by several loud, deep breaths, "they're ugly. A legitimate nurse needs to look at this."

"Alright," Dale said, throwing his hands up in the air in exasperation.

"We need somebody to drive us home in my sister's car because I can barely drive sober, I definitely won't be able to with booze in me, and Katie is probably concussed, but even if she weren't she's obviously too drunk to drive."

"I'm goin' where you go, so I'll drive," Dale said.

"You've drunk more than me."

"I can," Curly chimed in. "I've had one beer since we got here – I'm fine to drive."

"If you crash my sister's car I will kill you," Susan told him, "but first I need something from a freezer."

Curly and Dale retreated back down the stairs to find something cold and when they reached the bottom they found Tim standing there waiting for them, a beer in hand as he observed the party that had swung back into life. Tim's free hand held a bit of cloth from his shirt where Rick had ripped it in the fight. He pressed the cloth against his bloody cheek where Curly suspected there would probably be a massive shiner in a couple hours.

"What's goin' on up there?" Tim asked Curly as Dale continued on toward the kitchen without him.

"Dale's girl thinks we need to take them to her sister to see if she needs stitches," Curly told him, "so Dale and I were gonna drive them there in the car they came in."

Tim nodded. "You make sure you come find me if there's any trouble," he said and it was Curly's turn to nod.

"How bad is your cheek?" Curly asked to change the subject.

Tim pulled the cloth away to show Curly his cheek and Curly could see that a deep bruise had formed around the large split in his cheek.

"Thomas was off his fuckin' head, man," Tim said. "He was all over the joint, just 'cause I told his girl that I had _nothing_ to do with his buddy dyin' but that that's what happens when you fuck with another guy's girl." Curly nodded along, agreeing. Rick's eyes had been wild, completely wired. "He's a fuckin' lunatic if he's willin' to pull a knife on me for tellin' the God damn truth."

"I got frozen peas," Dale said, appearing to the side of Curly.

"Remember what I said," Tim warned Curly before he and Dale went back upstairs. "Don't go off half-cocked if there's trouble, you come to me."

"Yeah," Curly said, not bothering to hide the annoyance in his voice – Tim was always expecting him to do the dumbest thing. Of course, that was because Curly had done some of the dumbest things in the past, but he _was_ capable of learning a lesson.

The two boys made it back up to the bathroom and knocked on the door. When Susan opened it they could see Katie standing behind her, leaning back against the sink for support. Curly looked at her and took in her face. She was holding a bunched up mess of toilet paper stained red against her forehead, and several spots on her face and in her blonde hair had smears or flecks of dried blood. It looked like there had been a lot of it. She looked terrible.

"Peas," Dale said, holding them up for Susan, who took the small bag and wrapped the rest of a toilet roll around it. She turned to Katie and took the toilet paper from her hand and replaced it with the padded bag of peas.

"Keep pressure on it or it'll start bleeding again," Susan told Katie and then turned back to Dale and Curly. "Are you ready to go now?"

"Alright," Dale said and Susan pulled the car keys out of her pants pocket and handed them to Curly.

"I meant what I said about the car," she warned.

The four teenagers headed for the stairs, Susan keeping a protective hand on Katie's shoulder the whole way down. When they reached the bottom, Katie pulled the peas away from her forehead slightly and pressed the fingertips of her free hand softly on the cut. She pulled her hand away and didn't find fresh blood on her fingers, so she lowered the peas down and walked with her hands at her side as they all squeezed through the clusters of people around the room, so many of whom turned their eyes on Katie. She let her messy hair fall in her face as she walked in an attempt to cover the bloody cut on her forehead, but she knew she still looked as terrible as she felt.

"Okay, Hercules," Susan said once they were outside and heading for her sister's car. "Put the peas back on now."

Katie followed Susan's instructions again and the car ride home was a long one, with Dale and Curly in the front and Susan and Katie in the backseat. Katie's eyelids kept growing heavier and heavier until Susan jolted her, telling her not to fall asleep until her sister had gotten to look at her head. This happened several times until finally, Curly was pulling into the driveway of the house Dale had pointed out as Susan's.

Katie felt her body relax the moment she walked through the front door – this place was familiar and safe. The light in the den was off, but the kitchen light was on and Katie could hear the sound of somebody puttering around in there. She drifted over to the couch in the den as Susan turned a light on, told the boys to have a seat and disappeared into the kitchen where it was probably her sister, Kim, heating herself up some dinner after a long shift at the hospital.

Katie sank into the couch, her legs curling up to her right, as Dale and Curly took an armchair each. She felt like lying down and letting sleep engulf her, but knew she had to stay awake for just a little while longer.

Susan re-entered the den with her sister following close behind, wearing a long brown dressing gown, her hair dripping dry.

"Hi," she greeted Dale and Curly with a small wave and then looked at Katie, coming to lean down in front of her so that their eyes were on the same level.

"Bit of a drunken fall?" Kim asked her, a knowing grin on her face.

Katie didn't know what story Susan had told her, but it obviously wasn't one about her brother pushing her over into a table and she was grateful for that.

"Something like that," Katie replied, trying to match Kim's grin despite the churning in her stomach at telling a white lie.

"Can I see?" Kim asked and Katie pulled the peas away from her head. "It doesn't look too bad; it's only a very thin, clean cut. You shouldn't need stitches."

Susan lent forward behind Kim and assessed the cut again herself. "It looks much better than it did before. You should've seen the blood, Kim."

Kim nodded. "Head injuries usually bleed more than others. Can you open your eyes wide for me and tell me your name?"

Katie opened her eyes wide and said, "You know my name."

"But do you?"

Katie stared at Kim for a moment, not sure if it was some kind of trick question. "Katie Thomas."

"And who's the president?"

"Lyndon Johnson, until the election, at least according to my mum."

Kim laughed. "You're fine, Katie. Get some sleep, all of you." She stood up and looked around at Susan, Dale and Curly. "And if one of you wakes up in the night, try and wake her up to make sure she's still breathing." She winked at Susan then said her goodnights and disappeared down the hallway.

"Some night, huh?" Susan said, perching herself on the armrest of the armchair Dale was seated in.

"How's Rick?" Katie asked again, directing her question at Dale since he was the one who had given her information on him back at Buck's, and because somewhere at the back of her mind Katie could remember the argument she'd had with Curly earlier that evening. "What happened while we were upstairs?"

"He'll live," Dale answered, "might have a nasty scar on his arm, though."

"Why?!"

"He pulled a knife on my brother," Curly answered for Dale, looking at Katie, still annoyed that she still wanted to know if Rick was alright after all the trouble he had caused that night. "Luckily Tim knocked it out of his grip and turned it on him before he could cut up _another_ person tonight. Your brother got cut, too – an eye for an eye."

It took Katie a moment to realize Curly was blaming her brother for the cut on her head. "He didn't mean to hurt me," she started to explain, but Curly interrupted her.

"My sister's plenty annoying, but I stopped pushing her around once I started gettin' bigger. You got in his way and he pushed you, there ain't nothin' okay about that."

"You don't have a clue what you're talking about," Katie bit back, but Curly rounded on her again, leaning forward in his arm chair.

"No, you don't," he hissed at her so as not to raise his voice in the quiet house. "You're so quick to judge everybody else and label them hoods, but your brother's the one that knocked his sister out and pulled a knife on someone else, not me or my brother."

"No, your friends just shoot people in the head," she spat at him, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back into the couch, frustrated, "but that's not worth mentioning, is it?"

"Hey now," Dale said, leaning forward and interrupting the bickering. "That is bullshit. Nobody even knew Arnie had a damn gun on him, much less that he was planning on usin' it."

Katie looked away from Dale and glared down at her lap while Curly glared up at the roof. A few minutes of dead silence passed and then Susan stood up, grabbing Dale's hand and pulling him up, too.

"Well, make yourselves comfortable," Susan said, sounding overly polite in the awkward moment. "Goodnight," she said, and she and Dale walked off down the hallway to Susan's bedroom.

Neither Katie nor Curly acknowledged Dale and Susan's departure, still glaring at their selected spots. A few more minutes passed and Curly sighed, finally dragging his eyes from the roof to look at Katie, still looking down at her hands, her glare having softened to a tired stare, though.

"I know he's your brother," Curly said quietly, almost kindly, "I just don't think you should bury your head in the sand about the kind of person he is when he's not bein' your brother."

Katie looked up at him and saw his face void of any anger, no malice or superiority. He was telling her his truth as he saw it; he was being real with her. She realized then how deeply each side of this stupid feud believed that their truth was the right truth. Rick believed without a doubt that the Shepards were bad, and the Shepards believed without a doubt that Rick and his boys were bad guys, for reasons she didn't really know about.

And she didn't know those reasons because she _had_ buried her head in the sand for so long, ignoring the supposedly bad things about her brother and only believing the good, while she had been doing the exact opposite with Curly – choosing to ignore the good things about him, like how he made her laugh, feel at ease and smelt like smoke, and instead only focusing on the bad and irritating parts of him.

Curly finally gave up on expecting something, _anything_ , from Katie and lent back in his armchair, moving his head about to find a comfortable position for it to be in when sleep came for him.

A moment later, deciding that she wanted to allow herself to see the good in Curly, in an attempt to balance out the bad, she stood up slowly, and when the world stopped whirling about so violently she walked off into the hallway where she opened up a cupboard and retrieved two old, thick blankets from it. She walked back out into the den and threw one on the couch she had been sitting on and then threw the other blanket at Curly in the armchair.

Curly coughed when the thick, folded blanket landed on his stomach. "Could you have thrown it any gentler?" he asked sarcastically.

Katie was going to answer back with a sarcastic quip of her own, but stopped short when she thought that he might interpret her words differently to how she intended them, so she just turned back around, went into the kitchen and flicked the light switches off. The kitchen and adjoining den fell into darkness and Katie had to stand still in the dark for twenty seconds or so as her eyes adjusted to the dark and she started to see the shapes of the furniture in the moonlight streaming in from the window.

She slowly made her way back over to the couch, feeling her way around in the dark, and collapsed onto it as slowly as possible, not wanting any sudden or forceful movement to hurt her head any more. Her forehead was throbbing, the cut stung and it felt as though a sledgehammer was hitting her skull from the inside. She laid on her back, pulling her blanket over her with her left hand as her right hand came up to rest on the right side of her forehead beside her cut.

She thought about putting the bag of peas, which she had left on the armrest of the other end of the couch, back on her cut but thought it would just sting worse, and she so badly needed sleep. She lay there like that for a while, hers and Curly's breathing finally beginning to even out when a noise came from down the hallway.

Curly's senses pricked up at the noise and he waited another few seconds for the noise to come again. It was a creaking noise. And it came again a second later. And again.

"Kill me now," Katie groaned into the darkness, rolling onto her side and pulling her blanket up over her ears as it struck Curly that he was hearing the sound of a bed creaking, probably Susan's. Curly genuinely laughed at that. At least Dale was getting a good ending to his night, and if Curly was going to suffer through having to hear it then at least so would Katie.

"Thank you," Katie said quickly and loud enough that Curly would definitely hear her, partly to drown out the sound of whatever was happening in Susan's room and partly because she just wanted to say something nice considering all of the nasty things she had said to him tonight.

"For what?" Curly asked after a long moment of pause, wracking his mind for what he could have possibly done in the past half hour to deserve her thanks.

"For getting us out of there," she answered and Curly's annoyance softened a little.

"Don't worry about it," Curly replied, looking over at where her voice came from on the couch. He could just make out her blonde hair poking out from under her blanket.

"And I'm sorry, for the way I acted tonight. Earlier, at the drive-in. I'm from the same side of town as you, and my life is…" crazy, haunting, nerve-wracking, "messed up just like everybody else's. I shouldn't have acted like someone I'm not."

Not knowing quite how to handle her sudden outburst of niceness and level-headedness, Curly decided to be his normal aloof self and steer the conversation away from apologies. "You _were_ staring at me first though, weren't you?"

"What?" Katie laughed.

"On Monday, in History, I looked at you and you were already lookin' at me."

Katie laughed again. "Yes, I was already looking at you," she finally admitted before she had a chance to stop and filter herself. Maybe she was still a bit drunk, or concussed. Or both. Most likely both.

"See, that's all you had to say to begin with," Curly teased and more silence followed as Katie gave him a smile he couldn't see, leaving Curly hoping that Katie would say something soon to focus on over the other noises in the house.

"You didn't have to keep staring at me all week, though," Katie said through a yawn, her eyes closing.

Curly shrugged. "I felt like it."

"Why?"

"You're pretty easy on the eyes," he answered as if that were the most normal thing in the world to tell a girl who had just had a horror of a night and was concussed and fighting sleep on her threshold.

Katie laughed lightly, dreamily. "So are you," she breathed back quietly and a second or two later her smile faded to just the slightest upturn of her lips.

Curly could tell she had fallen asleep. The rhythm of her breathing had changed almost instantly and he felt her energy leave the room. The creaking from up the hallways ceased and he fell asleep not long after, her sleepy words still echoing in his mind.

 _Now I'm feeling at the end of the rope_

 _Now I'm falling down the rabbit hole_

 _Am I losing my mind? Or I just can't let go_

 _I feel like I'm losing control_

Curly woke the next morning to the sun streaming into the room through the open curtains in Susan's den. He cussed aloud, wanting to get up and close the curtains so he could go back to sleep, but he just couldn't bring himself to stand yet. His eyes hurt as he glanced around the room and the events of last night came rushing back. Arguing with Katie at the drive-in, her bust up with her brother, the gash on her head, the mood swings she'd had last night, hating him one moment and then admitting that he looked good right before falling asleep.

He looked over at her, still asleep on the couch, and wondered how she would treat him this morning. Whether the laughter they had shared in the dark last night would continue or whether she would go back to acting like she was better than him again.

He remembered Susan's sister telling them to try and wake her during the night to make sure she was still alive. He didn't know if anybody else had done it during the night, but this was the first time he had properly woken up since falling asleep early that morning, so he lent over the armrest of the armchair he had woken up in and softly shook her shoulder.

Her eyebrows pulled together as she groaned, squeezing her eyes tightly shut against the impending wake-up. Curly pulled away and watched her slowly, very slowly, open her eyes and blink back sleep.

"Well, you're alive at least," Curly commented, leaning his head back into his armchair and closing his eyes to the brightness of the room.

"Yeah, yeah," she groaned again, "rub it in."

Curly gave the roof a small smile, his head thumping its annoyance at the stiff position he'd slept in last night. "My head is killing me."

"I can guarantee mine feels worse," she said back, placing a hand on the side of her forehead that wasn't cut up and blood-stained. "Is it bad?" she asked, pulling her hand away again and looking over at Curly. "It's bad, isn't it?"

Curly looked over at her, taking in her appearance. Her blonde hair was stringy with knots and the bits of blood that had gotten in it and dried. Her eye make-up from the night before was dried halfway down her cheeks and dried blood was smeared on parts of her face that had no business being there. In the middle of the space of skin between her hairline and left eyebrow was a sore looking cut about two inches long. The cut skin looked red and angry and the skin around it was a dark shade of purple.

Curly shook his head. "It ain't too bad," he answered and then cracked a grin at her. "Makes you look tuff."

"I must look awful then," she laughed back, slowly sitting up in her spot on the couch, her hand pressed to her forehead again.

"Some night, huh?" Curly said, echoing Susan's words from the night before.

"Some night," Katie agreed, her eyes falling down to her lap upon realizing that it was daytime now and pretty soon she would have to go home.

"How're things gonna be at home for you?" Curly asked, unaware that he had read her mind.

Katie gave him a small shrug. "Fine," she said. "I know he didn't mean to hurt me," she looked up at him and said evenly, "I know you don't agree, but I know him. I'm more worried about my mom."

She didn't say anything more and Curly didn't want to pry any further into her home life. He believed that she wasn't afraid of Rick, he could see it in her eyes and hear it in the way she spoke, but it didn't change the fact that he had made her bleed.

"I need a shower," Katie changed the subject, pulling herself to her feet slowly, and when the room stopped spinning she walked off down the hallway, retrieved herself a towel from the same cupboard that she had gotten the blankets from last night, and entered Susan's bathroom, locking the door behind her.

She looked at herself in the mirror and thought to herself that Curly must have been trying not to piss her off when he'd told her she didn't look too bad. She looked like death, like several shades of shit, with her make-up smudged, her hair ratty and blood dried everywhere.

She noticed the blood was on her clothes as she peeled them off and when she got in the shower the water turned pink as it swirled down the drain. She kept her head out of the direct spray of the water and wiped gently at her face, particularly the area around her cut, with her wet hands. The sliced skin stung and throbbed, but after a few minutes of gritting her teeth she got used to it and finished up in the shower.

She felt dirty again as soon as her clothes were back on, but at least her skin felt fresher and aside from the gash on her forehead and her pale face she looked much better. When she came out of the bathroom she could hear voices down the hall in the kitchen and when she entered she found that Dale and Susan were awake and Curly had gotten up to join them around the kitchen counter as Susan spread butter over several slices of toast.

"Morning, Sunshine," Susan said, looking over at Katie standing in the doorway. "You look terrible."

Katie gave her a glare and sat down in one of the chairs at the kitchen table. "I'd hate to hear what you'd have had to say before I had a shower. At least Curly had the decency to lie."

Susan and Dale glanced at Curly, then back at Katie, and an awkward silence followed for the briefest moment before Susan cleared her throat and put down the knife she had been using to butter the toast. "Eat up," she told them, "I'll drive ya'll home after we're done."

The group ate silently, all appearing to be in deep thought, and the drive wasn't much different. Susan dropped Dale and Curly off at Curly's place first. As the two boys got out of the car and Susan started to pull away from the curb, Katie wondered fleetingly what Tim would say if he knew Curly had spent the night sleeping in the same room as Katie, talking until they fell asleep.

She wondered, too, what Rick would have to say about that, but she found that she wasn't as concerned with what his reaction might be as she had been previously. She didn't know if that was because he had knocked her down last night or if her eyes had just opened more to what Curly was like... All she knew was that it was a whole lot easier on her when she wasn't constantly thinking about what Rick would think. She liked Curly, she always had. There was an ease about him that rubbed off on her, that made her feel comfortable.

Katie's mom was home when she got home, it still being morning thanks to the sun waking up everybody at Susan's house so early. She thought about sneaking upstairs and avoiding her mom seeing her forehead, but she knew she couldn't hide it forever – there was likely going to be a mark there for a while yet – so she decided to get it over with.

Katie's mom was in her room upstairs, sorting laundry in a wide semicircle around her on the bed. She called out to Katie as Katie climbed the stairs and gasped when Katie appeared in her doorway, jumping up to inspect her closer.

"What happened to you?" Shirley asked, lifting her hand to touch Katie's forehead before Katie swatted it away.

"I'm fine," she answered quickly, "nothing major; Susan's sister already had a look at it."

Shirley pulled back and drank in her daughter with her eyes, concerned as she looked her up and down. "What happened?" she asked again, her eyes lingering on the blood stains on Katie's blouse.

"A fight broke out at this party I was at last night," Katie explained nonchalantly, "and I fell over in the frenzy and hit my head."

Shirley's eyes analyzed her daughter and Katie tried desperately to show some look of honesty in them. After a long moment Shirley nodded, seeming to accept the story. "These boys at these parties are dangerous," she stated the obvious, disgruntled. "You've got to keep away from them, Katie."

"I know," Katie muttered, "it was an accident, though."

"Were you drinking liquor?" Shirley asked, raising an eyebrow at Katie questioningly.

As Katie scrambled for an appropriate answer she and her mom heard the front door open and slam closed, and then footsteps on the stairs.

"Rick, will you look at what trouble your sister got into last night?" Shirley called out when Rick made it to the top of the stairs and a moment later he was standing behind Katie in the doorway. "And what's happened to you, too?!" Shirley exclaimed and Katie turned around to look at her brother.

Rick's bottom lip was cut and he was sporting a bruise on his right eye richer in colour than the bruise on Katie's forehead. He was wearing his leather jacket, and Katie figured he must have taken it off before his fight with Tim and that it was now hiding the slice on his arm that Dale had told her about last night. His eyes flicked from his mom to Katie and stayed there, looking directly at the cut on her forehead.

"I was just telling mom about this fight last night," Katie spoke quickly, hoping that he would catch on to the lie, "and I got caught up in the crowd and fell and hit my head."

"What happened to you?" Shirley interrupted.

Rick looked back at his mom and then at Katie again, his eyes narrowed at his little sister. "I got into a fight," he answered finally.

Shirley looked between her two children, at the way they were looking back at one another – silent pacts made telepathically – and suspicion began to grow. "The same fight that had Katie hitting her head?"

"No," Katie replied for Rick, "we were in different places last night." Shirley watched Katie and Rick for another couple of moments before Katie spoke again. "Anyway, I have homework," she said lamely and moved off down the hall to her own bedroom.

She fell onto her bed, lying on her stomach with her head turned to the left so as not to bother the cut. She lay like that for a few minutes, her eyes closed tiredly, and she was glad that she was at least exhausted enough that her mind was not whirring endlessly right now. She wasn't thinking, just revelling in the softness of her blanket against her right cheek.

A knock at the door came and Katie forced herself to roll over onto her back as she called out for whoever it was to come in. She knew it was Rick before he opened the door and let himself in; she knew the difference between Rick's knocks and her mom's knocks.

He stepped into her bedroom and closed the door behind him, looking at her forehead again before sitting down carefully in the chair at her desk as she sat up and crossed her legs on her bed. "Katie..." he started, regret so clear in his green eyes as he looked away from her and down at his hands in his laps.

"It's okay," she said, knowing already what he was going to say and wanting to spare him the guilt he was so obviously feeling.

"No, it's not."

"I'm okay."

"No, you're not," he hissed at her, trying to keep his voice down as he glanced at her bedroom door, agitated. "You're clearly not, Katie, so shut up and just let me say this." Katie watched him nervously, his nostrils flaring as he dug his fingernails into his palms. "I'm _so_ sorry," he said, grunting as though it was physically hurting him.

"You don't need to apologize, Rick," Katie started again. "You didn't mean it."

Rick shut his eyes tight and shook his head. "I did, though, I meant to push you. I could've handled it so many other ways, but I just pushed you instead – it was my first reaction."

"You didn't mean to hurt me."

Silence fell between the two for a minute and when Rick spoke again he was almost laughing. "You sound like Mom."

"What?"

"You sound like her," he said again, looking at Katie, something insidious playing out in his mind as he spoke, "talkin' about Dad."

"Hey," Katie said defensively, scooting to the edge of her bed and leaning forward to grab one of Rick's hands. "I know you're afraid of being like him, but you are _not_ Dad," she said strongly, believing her words with every ounce of her being. "You are a _good_ person." Rick clutched her hand in his and she could feel him shaking. Looking at him now she remembered Jodie's words at Buck's on new years eve. She had told Katie that dwelling on what happened with Mike was just hurting everyone more, and now Katie thought that as angry as she was with Jodie for telling Rick that she had been talking to Tim, she may have been right. "Do you think," she began slowly, "that maybe things have gone a little too far?" When a confused look crossed Rick's face Katie continued. "It might be better for everyone involved if you and the Shepards just cooled it for a little while."

He laughed bitterly again. "And now you sound like Jodie."

"I think she might have a point," Katie said carefully.

"No," Rick answered immediately, dropping Katie's hand and standing up abruptly. "They murdered Mike," he said, standing over her and a small part of her shrunk back from his looming form. "I can't let them get away with that," he said, shaking his head before wrenching Katie's bedroom door open and leaving her alone in her room.

 _Pain, it hangs on by a thread_

 _I lie alone in this bed, drift away_

 _Am I stuck in a dream in a room_

 _I fall apart at the seams in my mind_


	7. Rather Die Young

**Author's Note:** Sorry for the delay in getting this chapter up, and sorry in advance for the delay in getting next chapter up - I'm heading overseas next week to get married, so I doubt I'll have much time to update until I get back next month.

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from Beyonce's song, Rather Die Young. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 _ **Monday, 13 January 1969**_

 _Boy, you'll be the death of me_

 _You're my James Dean_

"Nice hair," Bradley commented after a long moment of soaking Katie's appearance in when she climbed into his car on Monday morning.

"Thanks," Katie replied, giving Bradley a grateful smile as she touched the bangs her mom had cut for her yesterday before she left for work.

She had swept them a little to the side this morning, not liking the way the ends of her bangs tickled her eyebrows. They still covered the cut on her forehead, though, which had started to scab over.

"Where'd you go after Buck's on Saturday night?" he asked as he pulled out of her driveway and started off down the road, headed for the high school.

"Back to Susan's," Katie answered, leaving out the names of the people that had helped them get there. "Her sister's a nurse; she made sure the cut on my head wasn't too bad."

Bradley glanced at her as he drove, nodding thoughtfully. "We went back, y'know," he said, "to Buck's for you. Shit happened pretty quick with Rick and we had to get him outta there, but Jeff and I came back to get you."

"Oh," was all Katie said, looking down at her hands in her lap.

It hadn't crossed her mind that one of Rick's boys would have come back for her. Mind you, not much had really crossed her mind at the time except thoughts of Rick and how she had ended up in Buck's bathroom bleeding from her forehead.

"Craig Chambers was pretty pleased to tell me you'd taken off with two Shepard boys." Katie froze, a cold prickle of dread travelling down her spine as she sat up straighter, tenser. "Thought he was talkin' shit for a second 'til I noticed Curly and Dale were missin' from the party."

Had he or Jeff told Rick? Surely not, Rick would have said something to her yesterday. Katie forced her eyes from her lap to look at Bradley, who was staring straight ahead at the road, his mouth set in a hard line.

 _Talk_ , she told herself, _explain_ , and when she spoke her voice came out croaky from her dry throat. "They gave us a lift to Susan's. I couldn't drive, and she had been drinking, too. I didn't know you would be coming back or we would've waited, but they seemed like they were our only way home."

Bradley glanced at Katie warily and nodded. "They didn't give you any trouble, did they?"

"No," Katie answered and silence fell between the two for a few minutes.

"Well," Bradley said finally, "I ain't happy it was them that helped you, but I'm glad you got outta there and checked out okay."

Katie instantly relaxed, relieved that Bradley wasn't going to give her a mouthful for leaving the party with a couple of Shepard boys. "You haven't told Rick, have you?"

Bradley shook his head. "Nah, you're safe for now. I don't think Jeff clued onto it and I didn't mention anything," he said as he stopped the car at a set of traffic lights and turned to look at her straight on. "Best not to stir the pot."

Katie knew all too well what he meant by that. "Yeah," she agreed, "Jodie did enough of that on Saturday night."

The car in front of them started moving forward and Bradley turned back to the steering wheel to start driving again. "You heard what she said?"

"Yeah."

"You believe it?"

Katie looked sharply at Bradley, who refused to look back at her. She analysed him for a few seconds, he was trying to look nonchalant but he wouldn't have asked her that question if he didn't have doubts himself.

"Honestly?" she asked, finally speaking.

Bradley shrugged. "I haven't told Rick who you disappeared with Saturday night, I ain't gonna tell him if you don't exactly agree with him, either."

Katie weighed his words heavily in her mind. He was one of Rick's boys; he might go running off to him first chance he got and stir up even more trouble. Maybe he was trying to confirm whatever suspicions he had about Katie and then dob her in to Rick. Those scenarios definitely crossed her mind, but there was a nervousness about Bradley that she was starting to notice. Like it was almost dangerous for the two of them to be having this conversation, but worth the risk if it meant he wasn't the only one doubting Rick.

"I don't know," Katie sighed. "I don't believe Curly or the others knew about it, but that's not to say the order didn't come from Tim," she added. "I know they've had problems for years now."

Bradley snorted. "Another thing stirred up by Jodie King."

"What?"

Bradley glanced at her, an incredulous look on his face. "You don't know that she and Shepard used to date?"

"No!"

"Years ago, when they were all still at school together. Jodie was goin' round with your brother for a while when he was a senior. Jodie and Shepard were both juniors, and I don't know what happened but somethin' sure happened and the next minute Jodie was Shepard's girl. It didn't last, obviously."

Katie stared at Bradley, her eyebrows creased at this new piece of information. Jodie and Rick had been off and on for years.

"So that's why Rick hates Tim?" she asked.

"I don't think it's the only reason," Bradley said, looking at Katie knowingly as he pulled into the parking lot at Will Rogers High School. "He's had a grudge ever since, though. Understandably, too, I guess; she was his girl first."

The car came to a stop in one of the vacant parking spots, but Bradley made no move to kill the engine. Katie was still looking at Bradley, having trouble comprehending such mind blowing information. She could vaguely remember the abrupt end to Jodie's visits to the house when she had been almost thirteen years old, but she hadn't had as good a relationship with Rick back then as she did now. She had still been a child and her brother had been dealing with his girlfriend cheating on him. Well, she assumed Jodie had cheated. It would fit pretty well into the puzzle and it sounded like something that was too out of character for Jodie King.

"I hate her," Katie muttered, shaking her head incredulously as she made to open her car door.

She climbed out of the car and then looked back to find Bradley still sitting at the steering wheel, the engine still running. "You coming?"

"Nah," he answered, "Jeff and I have a few things to do today. I just wanted to make sure you were alright after the weekend you had. I'll pick you up, though. We can grab a milkshake."

Katie knew that the things he had to do today were most likely jobs Rick had given him and Jeff, and for the first time she felt curiosity begin to stir inside of her.

"Sure," she said, nodding her head and closing her car door.

She stood back and watched him pull out of the parking spot and then turn out of the parking lot onto the main road. Once his car had disappeared she looked around the parking lot for somebody she knew. Pam and Janet were standing off with a few other girls not too far away, but Katie wasn't sure she wanted to try and involve herself in the girly conversation they were likely having right now. She wanted to talk to Susan about what Bradley had just told her, and sure enough she spotted her standing by Dale's car with Dale, Curly and Glenn.

She hesitated for a moment before deciding that if she could spend a night on a couch in the same room as Curly, she could handle being around him for five minutes before the bell rang.

"Hey," Curly was the first to greet her, nodding at her inquiringly from where he sat on the hood of Dale's car.

This was new; Katie being the one to seek Curly out.

"Hey," Katie said, coming to a stop beside Susan and giving a weird, little smile to everybody else. "Are you ready for class?" she asked, focusing her attention on Susan.

Of course. She had come over to see Susan, not Curly. He didn't know why he had even assumed that to begin with.

"Yeah," Susan nodded, glancing down at her watch. "We still have a couple of minutes, though."

Katie looked around at the three boys and figured it wouldn't do much harm for them to know what she had just found out about Jodie. In fact, they might have already known about it. Katie had gotten the impression that it wasn't exactly a secret – it was just something she had never taken proper notice of.

"Did you know your brother went round with Jodie King?" she asked Curly, trying not to notice the ease with which he sat up straighter, his eyes holding hers attentively.

"Years ago," Curly answered with a shrug of his shoulders, not sure what Katie's point was.

"Really?" Susan gasped, clutching Katie's arm, excited at the prospect of gossip.

"Yeah," Katie answered, looking away from Curly for a moment to address Susan, "and apparently she was with Rick before that."

"So that must be why he was so pissed when it came out that she and Tim had been talkin'," Glenn chimed in, reminding Katie and Curly of what had happened as a result.

"Partly," Curly added, remembered the crazed look in Rick's eyes as he had come at Tim with a knife.

"She's trouble," Katie said, looking back to Curly, something intense in her eyes.

Curly analyzed her, not sure what he was meant to say back to that and not sure what it was Katie was clearly trying to say. He could tell that there was more to it, could see it in her eyes that she was trying to stress something to him.

He noticed the dark circles under her eyes and wondered how much sleep she had gotten – clearly not enough. Perhaps she was just looking for somebody to blame everything on; the problem with Rick and Tim, the war being waged between their two gangs, Rick pushing her over on Saturday night... She still didn't want to believe that it was her brother who was responsible for his actions, not some stupid, meddling girl.

"What's new?" Susan scoffed. "If she wasn't trouble she'd be able to hold down a steady relationship, and I don't think that's ever happened for her." Katie looked away from Curly to acknowledge that Susan was speaking and had to bite her tongue so as not to point out that Susan herself had been the source of trouble between Dale and Jeff only a few weeks before. "I like your bangs, by the way."

"Thanks," Katie answered, lifting a hand up to her hair self-consciously as the warning bell sounded, ending any more conversation about Jodie.

The group started making their way to their first class of the day together, conversation turning to the poker game Glenn had won at Buck's after the other four had left. Katie walked between Curly and Susan and when they entered the classroom and she separated from him to take her normal seat on the other side of the room, she realized that she had just walked the whole way from the parking lot to their first period class without any ill feelings toward Curly or the other two boys. In fact, it had almost felt like it had before Mike had died.

Back then it had been so easy to divide her time between Rick's boys and the Shepard boys she went to school with. It had never been a problem when she walked to class with Curly and his friends, bickering and bantering back and forth like the kids they were. But for as normal as things suddenly felt again, Katie knew deep down that it wasn't. There was a heaviness inside of her now that she hadn't possessed before, and at the back of her mind was Rick and how he would react if he knew that she no longer harbored the same hard feelings against some of the Shepards that he still did.

As Susan and Katie took their seats, Katie wondered if it was the same for Curly, too. She didn't know if he was as worried as her about how Rick or even his own brother would react to them getting along like nothing had ever happened, but she figured he probably felt the same heaviness to a certain degree. She knew he wouldn't be missing Mike like she was, but when somebody witnessed something so terrible, it was bound to change you. It had certainly opened Katie's eyes to how quickly things could change. One minute Mike had been laughing, the next a hole had been shot through his head.

Katie shook her head free of that thought as she opened up her textbook and the History lesson began to go much as it usually did. Their teacher gave them a lecture for the first half of the class and then asked them to work quietly among themselves coming up with appropriate answers to some of the questions in their textbooks.

Katie twisted parts of her bangs around her fingers – still not used to the idea of having hair that hung down over her forehead so much and very aware of the gash it was attempting to hide – as she and Susan worked through their questions. At one point she felt eyes on her and when she looked up she found Curly looking over at her, as she had grown to expect by now.

She remembered his words to her before she had fallen asleep on Susan's couch on Saturday night. He had told her that she was easy on the eyes, which was why he had been keeping such an eye on her over the past week at school, and the memory of how unashamedly honest he had been with her made her smile a little. He grinned back at her for a moment and then they both looked away, Katie looking back down at her notebook.

While her mind was on the topic of honesty, she had to also acknowledge what he had said about her brother. She knew Curly didn't like Rick, partly because of what had happened on Saturday night at Buck's, but she knew there was more to it. Curly didn't like him as a person for more than the fact that he had pushed his little sister on the weekend. There was something more to it, something that Katie hadn't ever cared to know about and that everybody else had kept from her out of what she could only think was respect.

 _I just don't think you should bury your head in the sand about the kind of person he is when he's not bein' your brother_.

Bradley clearly knew about what Rick was up to when he wasn't at home with Katie, and Curly clearly knew about some of the trouble Katie didn't doubt Rick tried to cover up from time to time. Even Susan had alluded to knowing things about the situation with Rick's gang in the past. Katie was the only one that didn't have a clue what her brother really did with majority of his time, and the more she thought about that the more uneasy it made her feel.

What could she do, though? She could find out what her brother was up to or continue to ignore things. And she was terrified of what would happen as a result if she chose either of those options, not to mention that she didn't know what she could really do if she did find out that her brother was involved in some kind of unfathomable trouble. She hadn't even been able stop him from getting into a fight over the weekend.

"You okay?" Susan asked, watching Katie twirl a piece of her bangs and frowning.

Katie looked at her and forced a smile. "Yeah," she said, "just tired."

The two girls went back to their notebooks and Katie thought that maybe she should have used that opening to find out what Susan knew about Rick and his gang, but she quickly decided that Susan probably wouldn't be able to tell her anything except rumor and what she'd heard from the Shepard boys.

If Katie wanted the truth, she would be better off going to somebody who knew what was going on first-hand and somebody who wouldn't go straight to Rick and tell him she was asking questions. Her conversation with Bradley on the way to school that morning floated through her mind and she made a mental note to feel the situation out with him a little more.

When the bell rang, Susan and Katie packed up their things and joined Curly, Dale and Glenn to walk to their next class together. Susan walked hand in hand with Dale, laughing at the story Glenn was telling them about the drunken state of Two-Bit Mathews during the poker game on Saturday night.

Katie and Curly were walking beside one another, Curly half listening to Glenn's story when he picked up on how quiet Katie was being. She was walking with her notebook and textbook hugged close to her chest, not really focusing on anything particular, like she was off in another land.

Wanting to bring her back to the present and maybe to have a little contact with her, too, he bumped the side of her waist teasingly with his elbow.

Katie glanced up at him, a laugh escaping her lips at how absurd a gesture it was. "What was that for?"

"I caught you lookin' at me again in class," he replied, giving her a cheeky smirk.

"That would be because you were looking at me first," she answered, trying not to grin back at him and failing miserably at it.

"Not because I'm so easy on the eyes?"

"Don't make me regret that," Katie laughed. "I was concussed."

"I wasn't, though," Curly said back and Katie looked into his playful blue eyes, holding his gaze for a second too long before looking straight ahead of her again as warmth started to spread up her neck and across her cheeks.

"Lucky," Katie commented, "or you would've been in a world of trouble if you'd crashed Kim's car."

"Someone had to look after you," Curly shrugged, puffing his chest out heroically as they reached their next class, making Katie laugh.

"Oh really? I thought that was what Susan was doing mopping up all my blood," she said as she came to a stop outside of their classroom and Susan, Dale and Glenn continued on inside, not noticing that they were leaving Curly behind as Katie's only company.

"Without me you would've been stuck there, though," Curly responded, standing in front of Katie and crossing his arms across his chest. She pretended not to notice the way his lean muscles stood out more through his shirt when he did that.

"Not true," Katie argued, "Apparently Brad and Jeff ended up coming back for me."

A silent beat passed between them, Curly tensing up a little at the mention of Bradley Simons. "I bet he wasn't happy I got you outta there instead of him, or your brother, for that matter."

Katie shrugged. "He didn't say anything to Rick, and he said Jeff didn't catch on that it was you and Dale that drove us back to Susan's."

"Yeah, well," Curly began, glancing up the hall as he realized that Katie talking about Bradley was the reason he was suddenly feeling so worked up, "if he hadn't left you behind in the first place you wouldn't have had to get help from me."

"I'm glad he did, though," Katie said and Curly looked back at her, his eyes confused and searching for something she didn't want to admit was there. "He probably would have taken me to Rick," she explained quickly to cover up what she hadn't meant to imply, "and I don't think it would have been a good idea for me to see him that soon after everything."

Despite her wanting so desperately to see Rick right after what had happened, she was glad she hadn't. It had been difficult enough to take in his beaten appearance on Sunday morning, and the disagreement they had might very well have been worse if it had happened the night before when emotions were running even higher.

Curly nodded and pursed his lips like he was in pain as the bell sounded from the speaker on the roof above them. Katie glanced at the door to their classroom and any chance Curly had of continuing their conversation was gone. He took her cue and walked into the classroom with her at his heels. He took his seat with Dale and Glenn in the row of desks behind her, and apart from the one time Glenn made Curly kick the back of Katie's chair to get her attention so that Glenn could get the answer to one of the many equations he couldn't solve, Curly spent the class staring at the back of Katie's perfect, blonde head, still a little pissed at Bradley for a reason he didn't even understand.

The rest of the day continued without anything else of noticeable importance. Katie and Susan spent lunch with Pam and Janet and the next time Curly got to see them was during their last class of the day. They walked down to the parking lot with Curly, Dale and Glenn once the bell went to signal the end of the school day. Curly had almost shaken his mood from that morning by this point, until he noticed Katie glancing over at Bradley's car in the parking lot and quickly saying her goodbyes to Susan and the guys.

He watched her cross the lawn and open up Bradley's passenger door to climb in, shooting him a happy smile and telling him something Curly couldn't make out before they sped off out of the parking lot.

"Where're we headed?" Glenn asked as they made it to Dale's car. "Who's up for a game of poker? I feel like I might be on a winning streak."

"'Cause you figured out how to cheat most likely," Curly chimed as he climbed into the backseat of Dale's car.

"I ain't a sore loser like you, Curly," Glenn quipped back, flipping Curly the bird and eliciting a giggle from Susan.

Curly cussed at him and continued to stew in his bad mood the entire drive back to Dale's place, where they did indeed play a half-assed game of poker that Glenn won.

 _You drive too fast, you smoke too much_

 _But that don't mean a thing_

 _'Cause I'm addicted to the rush_

"Are you alright?" Bradley asked Katie from where he sat across from her at their table at Jay's.

She had gone from talking animatedly one moment to staring into her milkshake the next with her eyebrows furrowed, apparently deep in thought.

Katie looked up at Bradley, shocked. "Sorry," she said, giving him an small, embarrassed smile, "I guess I'm still a bit tired from the weekend."

"You did have a big one," Bradley agreed. "Is somethin' on your mind, though?"

Katie looked at him, so open to anything she could say. And there were plenty of things she could say. He hadn't brought Jeff with him to pick her up from school and take her for this milkshake, and he could have brought him easily since he had supposedly spent the day doing _a few things_ with him.

Was this a date? Or was Bradley hoping to continue the conversation they'd had that morning on the way to school? Maybe it was both, but the thought of this being a date brought Curly to mind and the way he had tensed when Katie had mentioned Bradley earlier that day.

Not knowing how to put her thoughts into words and too nervous to bring up their morning's conversation about Rick, Katie just shook her head and tried to give him another believable smile.

Bradley narrowed his eyes at her and dug a little further. "I saw you comin' out of school with Shepard and his buddies. I guess their help on the weekend changed your attitude toward them a bit."

Katie didn't miss the annoyance in the way he spoke.

She shrugged at him, trying not to make it seem like too big of a deal. "I got along with them fine before everything went upside down."

"Before they killed Mike, you mean," Bradley corrected, leaning back in his seat and staring at Katie.

"If I recall correctly, I wasn't the only one doubting they were involved in what Arnie did this morning," Katie responded, not sure where Bradley's sudden certainty had come from.

Bradley shook his head and looked away for a moment before sighing and exhaling out whatever bad energy he'd been holding in. "I don't know what to believe anymore," he muttered, looking down at his own milkshake and stirring his straw around in it.

Katie watched him play with his straw and noticed for the first time how tired he looked, too. Apparently Katie wasn't the only one losing sleep over what had happened in the last month and a bit.

"What did you do today?" she asked, wondering if his gang jobs were adding more to his plate than she was aware of.

"Just some stuff with Jeff," he answered, and when she continued to look at him expectantly he added, "Gang stuff."

"Stuff I can't know about, right?" Katie asked resentfully and Bradley gave her a strange look.

"You've never been interested before," he said, sounding confused as he spoke. "It wouldn't do you any good to know, anyway."

"It's really that bad?"

"It just ain't anything you need to know about," Bradley responded.

"If Rick's getting into trouble, I think I need to know about it," Katie said, pushing a little, but Bradley just laughed at her and took a sip of his milkshake.

"When isn't Rick gettin' into trouble?" he meant it as a joke, Katie knew, but it didn't make her feel any better.

She dropped the topic, though, and instead told him about what he had missed in English that afternoon. She offered to lend him her notes so he could catch up, but she knew even before he declined that he wouldn't be interested in catching up on schoolwork.

Bradley drove Katie home when they finished their milkshakes, and when he pulled up in her driveway he let the engine idle so he could slip his arm around the back of her seat and lean in slightly closer to her to say goodbye.

"I ain't goin' to school tomorrow again," he explained to her, "but I'll come pick you up and drop you there, so you don't need to worry about a ride."

Katie nodded slowly and looked at Brad, noticing that his face was only a few inches away from hers. If this afternoon was a date then he might be hoping for a kiss right now, or anything the slightest bit encouraging, really.

"Gang stuff," Katie said stiffly, "right?"

Bradley looked at her a moment and Katie hated the awkwardness in it. "Yeah," he answered, leaning back in his seat again, dejected. "Somethin' like that."

Katie bit her lip, feeling guilty for the second time in a week at disappointing him, but she didn't know how else not to lead him on. "I'll see you tomorrow," she said.

She hesitated slightly before squeezing his arm quickly and climbing out of his car.

When she made it to her front porch she turned around and watched as Bradley's car pulled out of her driveway and took off up her street. "Some first date," she muttered to herself as he went.

 _You're the first one I ever seen_

 _That burns like gasoline_

 _So light a match, turn off the lights_

"So since you haven't mentioned anything about Saturday night, am I safe to assume that you didn't have any problems with Brumly after you left Buck's?" Tim asked Curly as he scooped some soup that their mom had made for dinner into a bowl from the pot sitting on the stove.

They were the only two in the kitchen, with their mom already having left for work and Angela painting her toe nails in the lounge room.

"Yeah," Curly said as he spooned some soup into his mouth and swallowed. "No trouble."

"How messed up was the Thomas girl?"

"Fine," Curly shrugged, "got a nasty gash on her forehead, but she's tough enough."

Tim nodded, seemingly satisfied with Curly's answer. "I got home pretty early yesterday mornin' and you weren't home. Where'd you stay?"

"Susan's place," Curly answered, and when Tim gave him a blank look he added, "Dale's girl."

"The trouble-maker?"

"Yeah," Curly answered, laughing a little at the memory of how differently Dale's night had ended compared to Curly's. "The break-up didn't last long."

Tim frowned. "What, is he dumb? The girl flirts with one of Brumly's boys and her best friend is Brumly's sister."

"Says the guy who was talkin' up a storm with Brumly's girlfriend on new years eve," Curly said as Tim crossed the kitchen to sit down at the kitchen table with him.

"Shut your mouth," Tim barked, smacking the back of Curly's head as he walked past him. "We were just talkin'."

Curly knew he probably shouldn't, but he snorted anyway. "You were standin' pretty close to just be talkin'."

"I said shut your mouth," Tim growled, giving Curly a deadly glare.

"Alright," Curly responded, raising his hands in surrender, "I'm just sayin', she seems about as much trouble for you as Susan is for Dale."

Tim rolled his eyes and slurped some of his soup off his spoon. "Don't lecture me, kid. You don't know the full situation. She's about as happy with her boyfriend as I am right now."

Curly pictured Jodie King afraid of how quickly things between the Brumly and Shepard gangs were spiralling out of control and not knowing how to handle the monster Rick was turning into, but in his head all he could see was Katie, desperately trying not to lose sight of the good in him, but unable to completely deny the bad after the way he had knocked her down.

 _And I wanna say_

 _Nobody understands what we've been through_

It was Rick that took Katie to school a couple of days later on Thursday, instead of Bradley. Jeff and Bradley hadn't been to school all week and with each day that passed Katie felt more and more curiosity build up inside of her.

Perhaps Curly had planted a seed in Katie's mind over the weekend, but she couldn't help the desire she now had to know what it was that was keeping Bradley and Jeff from school and bringing Rick home at all hours of the night. She had only spoken to Rick once since Sunday morning and that had been at ten-thirty last night when he had come home and grunted a hello at her as he walked past her bedroom on the way to his.

She had been finishing up homework at the time and when she climbed into bed a little while later, her mind had been too wired to sleep. She had spent majority of the night dissecting Rick's words to her on Sunday and his moods ever since, and had only gotten a couple of hours sleep as a result.

When she met him on the front porch the next morning she noticed that she wasn't the only one who must have gotten hardly any sleep the night before. She took in the bags under his eyes and his tired expression as they drove in silence toward the school.

She wanted so badly to ask him what it was that was preventing Bradley from taking her to school like he usually did. Where he had been last night and the nights before that, and why he was giving her the silent treatment – God forbid she disagree with anything he said!

But she bit her tongue and remained quiet, not allowing herself to voice the millions of thoughts, suspicions and fears that had been going through her mind all week. She didn't want to make anything worse, and the rigidity that he held himself with despite his obvious exhaustion was enough to make her feel like she might as well be treading barefoot on eggshells.

When Rick finally pulled up in a parking spot out the front of Will Rogers High School, he turned to her for the first time all morning and spoke. "You can catch the bus home, right?"

Katie furrowed her eyebrows at him. "You or Brad can't pick me up?"

"We ain't your personal drivers, Princess," he told her, sarcasm dripping from his lips. "You'll be fine; just don't get off 'til you're on our turf. You can keep yourself out of trouble for one afternoon, can't you?"

"Yeah," Katie answered slowly, confused by his accusatory tone, "sure."

She climbed out of Rick's car and watched him peel out of the parking lot, almost hitting a girl a couple of grades below Katie as she attempted to cross the parking lot to reach her friends. Katie watched him go, her confusion quickly transforming to annoyance. What had she done now to deserve that kind of hostility from him? She hadn't even seen him properly since Sunday!

"Katie!" Susan called out and Katie looked over to where the call had come from, her eyes landing on Susan and the Shepard boys hanging around Tim's car, which Tim had been letting Curly borrow for the past couple of days and was currently parked a few cars down from where Katie had gotten out of Rick's. "He didn't look happy," Susan commented as Katie walked over to them and came to a stop beside Susan.

She gave Katie a concerned look, which drew the attention of the three boys who had stopped talking to hear Susan's words, and Katie wanted to crawl under a car and stay there. Katie knew Susan was just concerned and that it was better to have a friend that cared than one that didn't, but the attention had quickly shifted to Katie and her brother, attention that she didn't want around people who clearly had their issues with Rick already.

Katie glanced at Curly, who was giving her a hard stare from where he stood leaning against his brother's car, and then looked back at Susan.

She tried to shrug nonchalantly, "He's fine."

Susan held her eye contact for a moment, clearly not believing a word of it, before leaving the matter alone and reigniting a conversation Dale and Glenn had been having about Glenn's car.

Katie tried her best to focus on what was being said around her than what had been said in Rick's car, but found it difficult to take in the boys' words. She stood there trying to look interested in the conversation, all the while thinking about Rick and feeling the burning sensation of Curly still looking at her.

She was grateful when the bell rang and the group began moving toward the school building.

Curly took up his position walking beside her, but didn't say anything to her. He could tell she wouldn't be able to hold a proper conversation about anything because despite what she had said, Curly knew just from the glazed look in her eyes that nothing was fine, especially not with her brother. He didn't know what the problem was with Rick now, but the look Rick had shot him as he drove past had been a filthy one. For a moment he thought that maybe Rick had found out about Katie spending Saturday night with him in Susan's lounge room, but quickly dismissed that possibility. If Rick had found out about that, Curly probably would have gotten more than just a dirty look from him. Rick had started a fight with Tim just last weekend for less.

During their first class of the day Curly looked over at Katie a couple of times, but she only looked back at him once and failed terribly at returning his grin. Her mood seemed to lift somewhat in their next class, though, as she quietly tried to explain how to solve a couple of equations to Susan beside her, and she didn't even roll her eyes at Glenn like she normally did when he asked her for a few answers.

By the time lunch came and she and Susan met back up with the boys, Katie seemed to almost be back to normal. She showed more interest in what was being said around her, even adding her own thoughts here and there, but she still hesitated a moment before agreeing and getting in Tim's car to join them down at the grocery store a block over from the school.

Once again, Rick crossed her mind and she thought fleetingly about whether or not he would like that she was going somewhere in Tim Shepard's car with his younger brother at the wheel, but she stubbornly thought to herself that she didn't much like being spoken to so nastily by her own brother, and wound up in the back seat with Susan and Dale a minute later.

When they arrived at the grocery store a few minutes after that and climbed out of the car, she told the others to go ahead of her. She wasn't hungry at all, she realised as she leant against the car and watched Susan, Dale and Glenn walk off across the parking lot and into the store, leaving Curly behind to finish the cigarette he had lit up while driving.

"So," he said, lifting himself up onto the hood of Tim's car, his cigarette bobbing between his lips, "you wanna tell me what your problem is today?"

"What?" Katie asked, coming around to the front of the car and crossing her arms across her chest defensively.

Curly realised how his words had sounded at the same time that he noticed the way her chest looked fuller with her arms crossed like they were. He quickly pulled his eyes up to her face again, removed his cigarette from his lips, and tried to fix his poor word selection.

"You don't have to," he said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. "But I know something's wrong."

Some of the tension eased in Katie as she looked over at the grocery store. She couldn't see Susan or the two boys through the front windows and figured they would probably take a while in there, as they did with most things.

Sighing, she moved forward and jumped up onto the hood of the car to sit beside Curly. She looked up at the blue sky – almost completely cloudless compared to the dark skies of the week before – and let the words fall from her mouth.

"Rick just isn't being too nice," she glanced at Curly and quickly elaborated when she saw his lips pressed into such a hard line, "he's just not really talking to me." She laughed a little bitterly, "I don't even know what his problem is."

"What was he sayin' to you this morning before he tore off outta school grounds?"

"Just that I had to catch the bus home," she answered. "First thing he's said to me all week."

"His buddy can't pick you up?" he asked and it took Katie a second to realise he was referring to Bradley.

She shook her head. "He said, 'we ain't your personal drivers, Princess'."

"Coulda fooled me with the way he's been dropping you off and pickin' you up every day this week when he ain't even comin' to class himself," Curly responded, taking another drag of his cigarette as a quick wave of regret washed over him from remembering the way he had called her a princess, too, not even a week ago. "Why isn't he comin' to class?"

Katie shrugged. "I'm not allowed to ask questions," she huffed at him, leaning back a bit further on her elbows and looking up Curly, "all I get is 'gang stuff'."

Curly was surprised to hear that she had been asking questions at all and almost commented on it, but forgot about it when he looked down at her lounging across the hood of the car, her stocking covered legs hanging over the edge. Though the frown on her face suggested turmoil, the rest of her body language seemed more at ease than it had all day and he didn't want to ruin it by making her talk about her brother any more.

"You look like you belong on a sun lounge with a book in your hand," Curly teased as he flicked his finished cigarette onto the asphalt ground.

"The sun's nice today," she replied, looking up at the sky again.

"We talkin' about the weather?" he asked, leaning back and admiring the sky with her.

She laughed softly, "Well it's better than talking about my brother being a jerk." She looked at Curly the moment the words were out of her mouth, biting her lip at having said something bad about her brother to someone he considered his enemy. "I shouldn't say that," she said and Curly shook his head, looking intently at her.

"If he's bein' a jerk you can call him one," he told her and she bit her lip some more before finally nodding.

"And you don't need to catch the bus," he said. "I'll drive you wherever you wanna go."

"Somewhere that isn't Tulsa, please," she joked and he laughed.

"Wherever you want," he said again and she gave him a smile. It was only a small one, but it lit up her features more than the sun had during their entire conversation. The sun did do wonders in making her blonde hair shine, though, like some kind of halo illuminating her head. "The bangs look good; I don't think I've said that yet."

"I still don't know if I like them," she replied, smoothing a hand over the hair on her forehead, "but I guess they're better than the huge cut on my face being on full display."

"How is it?"

She lifted her bangs up to show him, not worried about his reaction because it didn't look anywhere near as bad as it had when he had seen it fresh. Curly leaned in closer and saw that it was still bruised and a sore shade of red rimmed the edges of it, but the cut itself was scabbing over and didn't look as bad as the cuts he'd had before and left to get infected. It looked like she was taking care of it properly.

"That's nothin'," he said as she laid her bangs back down over the top of it. "Hardly a scratch."

"You're lying," she responded, looking up at him through her eyelashes and bangs, "but thanks."

Curly didn't say anything back and they both seemed to notice at the same time how close they were, staring at each other warmly. Their faces were only a few inches apart and looking up into his dark blue eyes Katie recognised the look that had been in them on new year's eve when they had shared a dance in Buck's empty kitchen.

She thought she ought to pull away, to leave like she had last time, but this time it wasn't worries about what her brother would think that were pushing her that way, it was just nerves at being so close to him. anticipating what might come. But that wasn't right; she _should_ have been worrying about what her brother would think. He had treated her like rubbish for hardly any reason at all, she didn't want to know what he would do if she allowed Curly to kiss her.

"You can't try to kiss me, Curly," she breathed, unable to break away from his eyes despite knowing that she should.

"Why not?" he asked, his eyes flicking down to her lips as he leaned in a little closer. "You don't want me to?"

He knew that wasn't the case, he knew that if she truly didn't want him to kiss her she would have put a stop to it already, but he didn't expect her to close the distance between them the way she did a moment later, pressing her lips to his before he had a chance to even process what she was doing.

 _She_ was kissing _him_. Her lips were soft and light against his, hesitant, like every single nerve in her body knew this was wrong and that she should stop. But she didn't, and for a few glorious moments she allowed him to bring his hand up to her neck and push harder against her lips, opening her mouth to deepen the kiss as his hand tangled itself in the hair at the back of her head.

And then as Katie began to run out of breath her self-control broke back through and the reality of where they were, what they were doing, and _who_ Curly was came crashing down on her. She finally pulled away and quickly looked over at the front of the grocery store, horrified at the thought of anybody having walked out and seen them.

"I'm sorry," Katie said, looking back to Curly, who was leaning back on his elbows again.

"I'm not," he teased, grinning at her like a fool. "I knew you wanted to kiss me."

Katie shook her head at him, astounded that he was making a joke of something so seriously wrong. "You're a little bit arrogant, you know that?" she commented, sitting up properly on top of the car hood as she noticed Susan, Dale and Glenn finally coming out of the grocery store.

Curly shrugged. "Can't be too big a problem if you were just makin' out with me."

Katie shot him a dirty look as Susan and the two boys came closer with various kinds of candy and food in their hands.

"Don't you dare tell anyone," she warned him.

He could tell she was trying to seem threatening, but he couldn't help but laugh at how disgruntled she was about what had happened when it had been her to make the move and kiss him, right after telling him not to kiss her, no less.

Dale, Glenn and Susan stopped and gathered around Tim's car, continuing a conversation that Katie and Curly hadn't been around for the start of. They both tried to catch up and focus on what was being said, but neither could really follow the conversation as they sat beside one another quietly, Katie sitting up properly and Curly still lent back on his elbows, their minds consumed by what their friends had very nearly interrupted.

Not a word was said between the two of them during the drive back to school and as Curly sat in their last class of the day, sneaking glances over at Katie, who seemed determined not to return the looks, he realised that maybe it hadn't been too bright of an idea to kiss her...

It clearly made things complicated for her with her relationship and loyalty to her brother, and Curly couldn't say with much conviction that Tim would be happy about what had happened. Tim had always been of the belief that girls shouldn't be involved in gang feuds and Curly figured that was part of the reason Tim hadn't minded Curly and Dale getting Susan and Katie out of Buck's last Saturday night. He had been thinking of Katie as any normal girl who'd had a rough night and needed to get home safely, but he might start thinking of Katie as Rick's kid sister if he found out that Curly had kissed her, because if Rick found out about it Curly could bet what little money he had that he would retaliate against the Shepard gang for it.

So Curly decided to give Katie her space. He didn't know how long he would be able to do that, since she had been almost magnetic to him all week, but he was going to try for today at least. He didn't regret the kiss, and he didn't truly think that she did either, but he knew they both were regretting the circumstances around them.

When the bell signalling the end of the school day rang, the group walked down to the parking lot together where Katie pulled up short as they reached Tim's car.

"I'm, uh, gonna catch the bus," she told Susan, glancing very briefly at Curly as she spoke.

"Don't be stupid," Curly cut in, tossing Tim's keys up in the air and catching them, "I told you I'd drive you home."

Katie looked at him for a long moment, trying to telepathically tell him to drop it and let her go without drawing attention to the problem between them, but it was already too late. Susan was looking between Curly and Katie and Dale was tapping his foot, clearly impatient to get off the school grounds.

"Fine," Katie muttered, conceding all too quickly and hating the smug smirk on Curly's face.

Katie sat quietly beside Susan during the drive home, only half listening to the boys throwing around ideas of how to spend the afternoon until they started to agree on a game or two at the pool hall. It was then that Curly's eyes flicked to Katie in the rear-view mirror.

"How 'bout it, Katie?" he asked, eying the uneasy look of her and wanting to give her a way out of the situation. The pool hall was on Shepard turf and regardless of the fact that she was a girl and should be allowed to go wherever she wanted, if she was having a problem with having kissed Curly because of his gang affiliation, then chances were she would have a problem crossing into Shepard territory, too. "Feel like a game of pool?"

"Not really," she answered, crossing her arms over her chest grumpily. "That's not exactly a part of town a girl from Brumly should be in."

"Aren't girls meant to be kept out of your stupid gang stuff?" Susan asked the group.

"Yeah," Curly answered, looking at Katie in the rear-view mirror again, "but not for the kid sister of Brumly's gang leader, right?"

Katie looked back at Curly in the mirror, her mouth opening to say something and then closing a second later, not even knowing what she could say back to that. The only thing that _was_ stopping her was her brother and how unhappy he would be to hear she had spent her afternoon on Shepard turf. Curly was right, but she looked away from him and out the window instead, not wanting to admit it.

Curly did as Katie wanted and dropped her home before heading off to the pool hall with the others. Katie spent the rest of the day sitting at her desk, staring down at her English notes and rereading the same words over and over again. Nothing would sink in, though, probably because her mind wasn't focused on the notes in front of her.

Instead she was focused on Curly and how stupid she must have seemed telling him that he couldn't kiss her and then being the one to lean in and kiss him. She honestly couldn't understand what Curly even wanted with her anyway. They had spent the majority of the last few weeks ignoring each other or arguing with each other, and even though a lot of that tension had eased this week and been replaced with some flirting, it didn't erase the fact that nothing good could come of the two of them interacting with one another that way. She already got the feeling that Susan was starting to clue in to something going on between Curly and Katie given that a week ago Katie still had nothing good to say about Curly and the Shepards and now she was going to the grocery store with them on their lunch break and getting lifts home in Tim Shepard's car.

Her stomach felt heavy at the thought of Rick somehow finding out that Curly had taken her back to Susan's on Saturday night, that they had spent the night together in Susan's lounge room – no matter how innocent the sleeping situation was – or that they had spent the week at school talking and laughing together.

She had been more than relieved to find her driveway and house empty when Curly had dropped her home, that was for sure. And that just drove home even more the idea that nothing more could happen with Curly again. She had genuinely enjoyed regaining a bit of their friendship over the past week at school, and it had made her realise that she didn't want to lose it again, but the moments of attraction between them had to stop. If not to spare herself and Rick something that could turn their home into a warzone, then definitely to spare Curly whatever horrible thing Rick would do to him for it.

That was it, she thought to herself as she leant back in her desk chair and stared up at her roof. She couldn't give Rick another reason to hate the Shepards. It wouldn't be safe for anybody involved.

 _I rather give up everything_

 _Than to live my life without you_


	8. Fast Cars

**Author's Note:** Sorry for another lengthy delay in uploading this next chapter. I was away all of late December and early January on honeymoon ( :D ) and have only just had the time to get back into this.

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from Tracey Chapman's song, Fast Cars. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 _ **Friday, 17 January 1969**_

 _Starting from zerio got nothing to lose_

 _Maybe we'll make something_

 _Me, myself, I got nothing to lose_

Bradley and Jeff returned to school the next day, picking Katie up on the way. When Katie joked about them having a nice mini vacation without her on the way to school she didn't miss the cautious glance the two boys shared in the rear-view mirror. She was thankful for their return nevertheless, mostly because she had spent the night riddled with anxiety over the kiss she had so stupidly stolen from Curly the day before and whether or not he would make a big deal of it when she saw him at school today.

Having Bradley and Jeff there worked as a bit of barrier as she got out of Bradley's car when they arrived at school. She looked over in the direction of where Susan and the Shepard boys usually gathered in the mornings and saw Curly eying her like a hawk, but he made no move to approach her, and she silently thanked him for that.

She avoided his gaze throughout the classes they shared in the morning and was relieved when she and Susan entered a class that they didn't share with the Shepard boys, just because she didn't have to focus on _not_ focusing on Curly for any longer. She told herself it was good that she didn't have to share this classroom with his unmistakeable presence, and she chose to ignore the glumness that quickly replaced the thrill she normally felt every time his eyes burned into her. The class passed by far too fast for one that was notoriously boring.

Five minutes before the end of their last class of the school day the teacher gave the class permission to pack up early. Dale, who had been twirling strands of Susan's hair around his pencil from where he sat behind her and dodging her swatting hand, launched into a conversation about their weekend plans to celebrate Glenn's eighteenth birthday at Buck's.

Katie talked with Glenn, Susan and Dale with ease, but whenever Curly addressed Katie her responses were short. She didn't know how to act around him or speak to him with their kiss lying unspoken between them. She couldn't talk to him like she had before that kiss or act the same way around him because surely that would only encourage him. He would think that everything was okay and probably seek out another moment like the one they had shared yesterday, and Katie couldn't let that happen again.

 _Just cross the border and into the city_

 _You and I can both get jobs_

 _And finally see what it means to be living_

Curly had been quiet the whole drive home from school and after several failed attempts at cracking jokes or starting conversation, Glenn had given up. Curly hadn't known what he'd expected when he got to school that morning after having kissed Katie the day before, but he sure hadn't been counting on her to get to school with Bradley and Jeff by her side.

She had avoided Curly and his buddies before the school day began and during their morning classes she had refused to meet Curly's eyes even once. She talked a little bit with the guys at the end of the day before school let out, but most of it wasn't directed at him, and the few times he could get her to answer him it was clear that that was the last thing she wanted to do.

He got it. She regretted the kiss. And he felt like a fool for thinking anything else might result from it.

Tim and Pete were in the lounge room drinking a couple of beers and chain-smoking cigarettes when Curly and Glenn walked through the front door of the Shepard house.

'What's goin' on?" Glenn greeted as he fell down into an empty armchair and kicked his feet up on the coffee table, probably happy to have someone else around to talk to other than a brick wall.

"Tryin' to decide what to do tonight," Pete answered with a bored shrug as Curly walked into the kitchen and a few seconds later returned with two beers.

"What's happening?" Glenn asked as Curly handed him one of the cold beer bottles and then proceeded to pop the top off his own.

"Nothin'," Pete answered and Tim turned his attention from his right-hand man to his kid brother guzzling down half a bottle of beer in one long gulp. "We'll probably just end up at Buck's."

"What's your problem?" Tim asked when Curly pulled the beer back from his lips and swallowed the liquid down.

"Nothin'," Curly said, though his tense, stretched thin lips suggested otherwise.

"Bullshit," Tim accused, looking his brother up and down. "You're shitty 'bout somethin'. What happened at school?"

"Jesus," Curly said before taking another shorter chug of his beer, frustrated at Tim jumping down his throat the moment he walked through the door, "Nothing happened, lay off."

"Thomas' boys were back at school today," Glenn interrupted and Curly didn't know if he was relieved or annoyed at him for steering the conversation away from the bad mood gripping Curly tighter and tighter by the minute.

"Do we know what they were out of school for?" Pete asked.

Glenn shook his head and looked at Curly, and the other two boys followed motion.

"Just that it was gang shit," Curly bit out, still standing in the middle of the lounge room, his lips itching for a cigarette between them.

"You just assuming that or you know it for fact?" Pete asked, his eyebrow raised sceptically, and Curly could feel Tim's eyes on him.

"Katie was around for a bit this week," Glenn said by way of explanation before Curly could tell Pete to go fuck himself.

"You think you can get more out of her?" Pete asked, his question directed at Glenn this time, but Glenn just shrugged and looked at Curly again.

"Doubt it," Curly grumbled and then looked at Tim. "Your girl probably knows more than Katie."

"Fuck up, Curly," Tim bit back at him, "she ain't my girl. And anyway, she's too fuckin' scared of Thomas to even look at me right now."

Glenn snorted. "Sounds a bit like you and Katie today, man," he said to Curly before wiping the smile from his face quick-smart when Curly glared back at him.

"I thought she was good with you after Thomas roughed her up on the weekend? You took her home, didn't you?" Pete asked, looking back and forth between Curly and Glenn in search of something he was clearly missing.

"Rick dropped her at school yesterday morning," Glenn said with a shrug of his shoulders, "your guess on what he said to her was as good as mine, but she's acted funny since."

Curly glanced at Tim, who was watching him through narrowed eyes, something Curly couldn't read ticking away behind them. He thought for one paranoid moment that Tim might be growing suspicious, though Curly didn't really have any reason to actually think that. Even still, he finished his beer in another big gulp and set it down hard on the coffee table.

"She's a bird," Curly said, pulling his pack of cigarettes out his jeans pocket, "and a Brumly one at that. Who fuckin' knows what's goin' on in that head." He lit his cigarette and hoped he looked more nonchalant than he felt.

 _You got a fast car_

 _Is it fast enough so we can fly away?_

Katie spent her weekend in her bedroom either studying or trying to study. She definitely didn't go to Glenn's birthday party. No matter what story she tried to spin with Rick, it wouldn't be acceptable for her to be at a Shepard party.

Most of the time she just found herself daydreaming about how things would be if Mike were still alive. She wondered if Curly would have ever paid her any extra attention if not for the death that they had both witnessed. How would it be if Mike hadn't been shot and there was still a peace, albeit a shaky one, between Brumly and the Shepard Gang? Perhaps whatever was between she and Curly could have bloomed in that alternate universe instead of being forcefully stifled in this one.

She relived what it was like under the unusually warm sun for this time of year, when she had leaned forward and pressed her lips against Curly's, and the electric shiver that ran through her when he had touched her neck and cradled the back of her head, his tongue sliding into her mouth. She imagined a scenario where that might happen again, no matter how unlikely it was, and what it might feel like for him to hold her tight against him. She ran through these thoughts a hundred times over the course of her weekend, and each time her thoughts reached fantasies as extreme as the last she would have to remind herself that she was being ridiculous - there were far too many things working against them.

 _And your arm felt nice wrapped round my shoulder_

 _And I had a a feeling that belonged_

 _I had a feeling that I could be someone_

"No way am I getting dropped off at school by my big brother," was Angela's response as she brushed her wavy black hair at the kitchen table on Monday morning when Tim had offered to give his two younger siblings a ride to school, "what am I, twelve?"

"Take the lift, Angel," Mary Shepard said to her as she searched around through the mess on the kitchen table for her keys, strands of her dark hair falling out of her ponytail as she rushed. "I've gotta start work early so I can't take you."

"And you ain't walkin'," Tim added, spotting his mom's set of keys to his right on the kitchen counter. "They're here, Ma."

"Mom!" Angel pouted as Mary turned around and snatched her keys up off the counter.

"Sorry, baby," Mary said before looking at Tim, "I can't pick her up, either."

"I got it," Tim responded and Mary nodded and turned back to Angela, who was howling a frustrated groan.

"Shut the fuck up," Curly grunted, tossing a chunk of crust from his toast at her.

"Hey!" Mary shouted, pointing an accusatory finger at her unruly son.

She held her finger out for a moment before Curly looked away sheepishly, and then turned, placed a quick kiss on the top of Angela's head and took off out of the house like a bat out of hell.

"Fuck you, Curly," Angela said the moment they all heard the front door slam behind their mom before ditching the hairbrush in her hand across the kitchen table at Curly's head.

"For fuck's sake, you two," Tim said as Curly brought his hand up just in time to deflect what would have been a solid blow.

The brush landed down in the middle of the table in a clatter and Curly and Angela both lunged for it. Tim growled Curly's name when Angela came up short and Curly's hand came back holding the brush, itching to retaliate. Tim's warning was enough for Curly to decide it was probably better for him to snap the brush handle off instead of throwing it back in Angela's face.

"Tim!" She screamed in protest as Curly chucked the brush handle and head down onto the table, one half followed by the other, with a triumphant smirk on his face.

"That's it," Tim said, slamming his closed fist down on the kitchen counter, "both of you get out to the fuckin' car. Ya'll can be early for all I care."

Angela glowered at Curly for a moment longer before kicking up out of her seat and storming for the front door.

"She's psychotic," Curly said, shaking his head at Tim.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Tim waved Curly off with one hand while his other reached into his pocket and retrieved his car keys and a packet of smokes. "Let's go."

The two boys headed out into the front yard, Tim pulling two cigarettes from his pack and Curly pulling his lighter out of his pocket and handing it to Tim. Tim stopped on the lawn not far from the car and lit up one cigarette, handed it to Curly, and then lit up his own. Angela sat in the front passenger seat with her arms crossed, looking for all the world like a petulant little child.

"What's the likelihood of runnin' into Rick Thomas droppin' his kid sister at the same school?" Tim asked, blowing out a long cloud of smoke.

Curly shrugged his shoulders and answered, "She gets a ride with a couple of his boys more often than not."

Tim nodded and took another drag. "Is she really not talkin' to you?"

"I dunno," Curly responded. "Why?"

"It might really piss her brother off to know she spent the night with you the other weekend," Tim said, a sly, scheming grin spreading across his lips.

"Yeah, so much so that he might smack her around again," Curly said with a small frown.

Tim looked at him for a long moment before slapping him on the back of his shoulder. "Talk to her," he said before turning and heading to his car.

They arrived at Will Rogers High School around the time that Curly normally got there with Dale and Glenn most mornings thanks to Tim and Curly's chat delaying things a little. Angela was out of the car and taking off toward her friends before Tim even killed the engine. Tim and Curly got out of Tim's car together and walked a couple of cars down to where they had spotted Dale and Glenn leaning against Glenn's car.

"You got her runnin'," Tim commented patting the trunk of Glenn's car when he and Curly joined them.

"Yeah, it was a bitch to fix, though," Glenn said with a grin. "How'd you wake up yesterday mornin'?"

"Not too bad," Tim responded with an easy shrug even though Curly was sure it was Tim and not Angela he'd heard vomiting in the bathroom next door to his bedroom after Glenn's birthday celebration over at Buck's place.

"Here we go," Dale muttered before any more conversation could continue, knocking his elbow into Glenn's side and nodding his head for everybody else toward where Rick Thomas' car was pulling into the parking lot.

The car pulled up in a parking spot several cars down from where the Shepards were gathered, and it was clear that Rick had spotted them back when he got out of the car and the first direction he looked was theirs.

Katie climbed out of the passenger side and came around to meet her brother, and Bradley and Jeff who had come across from the other site of the lot, in front of his car. She glanced warily over at Curly. Rick hadn't said anything when they had pulled into the parking lot, but she knew from the scowl on his face that it was too much to hope that he hadn't seen Tim and his boys at all.

"Is Shepard normally here every day?" Rick asked Bradley and Jeff as he lit up a cigarette and took a drag.

"Curly is," Bradley tried to joke, but he wiped the grin off his face when Rick gave him an unamused look, "not Tim, though."

Rick looked over at Tim again, who was watching Rick and his boys already, sizing up his opponents and readying himself for a problem. "I bet you any money it was his boys that lifted Dennis' rims over the weekend."

"No doubt," Jeff added affirmatively and Katie rolled her eyes.

Rick and his buddies had been at Buck's most of the weekend. The chances of it being a Shepard or just another party goer who stole Dennis' rims off his car were probably even – they certainly had no proof, anyway.

"Don't you have places to be?" Katie asked Rick, momentarily diverting his attention away from Tim.

She had no idea what places he might have to go to and the things he might have to do, but he was always on the move these days so it was a fair assumption. Rick narrowed his eyes at Katie for a few seconds before taking another drag of his cigarette and telling her and the two other boys, "Stay here."

He closed the distance between the two gangs quickly and tension thickly laced the air around where he came to a stop in front of Tim and his boys behind him. Still smoking, he exhaled a cloud of smoke toward Tim and spoke.

"You boys don't happen to know anythin' about one of my boys' rims bein' lifted on Saturday night, do you?" Rick asked, his eyes flicking between Tim and the three boys behind him.

Tim smirked and glanced back at his boys, feigning innocence. "No, can't say we do," Tim answered, turning back and looking at Rick before adding, "We'll make sure to keep an eye out for 'em, though."

Curly watched Rick's eyes narrow at Tim the way they had at Katie just a minute ago and he highly doubted that Rick believed their story. Even if Pete hadn't had the bright idea of pinching Dennis McKay's rims on his way out of Buck's after one to many shots to Glenn, Rick clearly believed what he wanted to believe whether it was warranted or not.

Rick took another cool drag of his cigarette before dropping it to the asphalt and grinding it out with his boot. His lips twisted into a cruel, calculating smirk before nodding at Tim. "We'll find who it was ourselves. Rest assured they won't get away with it."

Curly watched Rick return to his car and spout off a few words to his boys before getting in and taking off out of the parking lot, making sure to burn rubber on his way.

 _You still ain't got a job_

 _And I work in a market as a checkout girl_

 _I know things will get better_

Katie spent the next few days much the way she had last Friday. She spent most of her time with Bradley and Jeff, who were now back at school for an unspecified amount of time, but still allowed herself to enjoy the moments of conversation in her classes with the Shepards whilst avoiding speaking directly to Curly as much as possible. It was a difficult act to juggle, but it increased the peace and reduced the friction that she'd felt a month ago when she had refused to acknowledge their existence altogether.

Her mission of successfully avoiding Curly and the subject matter of their kiss was short-lived, though, when the lunch bell rang on Wednesday afternoon and Katie and Susan walked out of their class to find Curly, Dale and Glenn leaning against the wall of lockers opposite their classroom.

"How'd you get out of class and here so quick?" Susan asked, walking forward to greet Dale with a kiss.

Katie trailed along behind her, trying to quickly think of a way to get out of walking downstairs to the cafeteria with them. She suspected that she could maybe trust Bradley to keep his mouth shut if the interactions he saw between Katie and the Shepards was kept minimal, but she doubted Jeff would have any qualms telling Rick anything and everything he saw.

"I've gotta meet the guys," Katie said lamely, touching Susan's arm to briefly take her attention away from Dale.

"You can walk down with us at least, can't ya?" Glenn asked and Katie involuntarily glanced at Curly uneasily.

"I need to get something from my locker first, I don't want to hold you up," she lied.

"You got your hands full already," Curly interjected, nodding down at the textbook and notebook she was holding against her chest, "I'll help you. It's just down this hall, ain't it?"

They were up on the second floor and the crowd around them was quickly thinning out in pursuit of the cafeteria below. Curly waved Dale, Glenn and Susan on without him and dread gripped Katie at the thought of being alone with Curly and caught in her lie.

Curly took off in the direction of Katie's locker and she followed behind him, anxiously anticipating the conversation she did not want to have with him. She had hoped they could just forget about the kiss and not mention it again, but Curly clearly wanted to be alone with her for some reason and Katie doubted it was to discuss the weather. They made it down the now empty hall and came to a stop in front of Katie's locker, which she looked at nervously before unlocking.

"I didn't really need to get anything out," she said, depositing her books in there anyway so that she wouldn't have to carry them around for the entire lunch break.

"Didn't think so," Curly responded, a knowing frown on his face. "You tryin' to give us the cold shoulder again, Katie?"

Katie shrugged and scuffed her shoe on the floor. "I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't, aren't I?" she said, surprising herself with how bitter she sounded.

"It doesn't have to be that way," he said, wanting to tell her how easy her life could be if she just stopped letting Rick dictate it.

"But it is," she bit at him, annoyed, still refusing to meet his gaze.

"We could keep it to ourselves, y'know," he said with a shrug of his shoulders, leaning down a little to try and read her small face. He had been thinking about it since Tim had brought her up and the idea was flimsy at best, but he had to put it out there anyway. "You know Dale and Glenn don't give a shit, it's just your brother and his buddies with the problem."

Katie gave a small laugh at that. "And what do you think they're gonna do about that problem when word gets back to them that I'm not being loyal?"

"You tell 'em you're a girl and you don't give two shits about the gang problem – Lord knows my sister's done it before – and if there's an issue they can come see me about it." Curly didn't know how Tim would react to him bringing the wrath of Brumly down on the gang because he had to go and feel sorry for the girl who was trapped by her big, bad brother, but he figured it couldn't be much different to Tim creating even more animosity between the gangs by talking to Rick's girl.

"No," Katie shook her head vehemently, her eyes flicking up to Curly's for a moment before looking back down at the floor, "I'm not gonna be the cause of another problem you guys have with each other."

Curly sighed and tried to shrug indifferently, despite the annoyance building inside of him. "I'm just tryin' to help you here, Katie."

"I don't need it," she responded tightly, "I just need you to stop trying to kiss me."

"You kissed _me_!"

Katie jumped a little at the sudden explosion and looked up at him, startled. "You know what I'm talking about. You wanted to kiss me that night at Buck's and all I did last Friday was finish what you started."

Curly threw his hands up in the air exasperatedly. "I can't help it if I feel like kissin' you; I should be able to fucking do that!"

"Maybe two months ago you could've!" Katie responded, her voice echoing in the empty hall, matching Curly's volume.

"So just because of the timing that kiss was nothing?"

"Yes, and it can't happen again."

"Bullshit," he said, moving closer to her and she backed up into her locker. "You know what I think?" she looked straight on at the fast rise and fall of his chest until his hands touched either side of her chin to lift her face. His hands sent jolts through her even though they were the last things she wanted on her right now. "I think that kiss was the first thing that's happened in the last month that hasn't made you feel fuckin' miserable."

Katie brought her hands up to clench around Curly's wrists, trying weakly to remove his hands from her face because if he kept them where they were much longer she would surely melt.

"Let go," she said, hating the way her voice sounded so raspy and feeble. One touch and he had sent the fight out of her, but she couldn't let him have that much control.

"And I don't think you're the one that wants to be miserable," Curly continued, his hot fingertips digging into her cheekbones in protest of her failing attempt to take his hands off her. "I think it's your brother that wants you to be like that and that ain't right."

She gave up on his wrists and instead pushed her back off her locker and shoved him in the chest with all her might. "Shut up!" she yelled at him, and even though he could've very easily shrugged her shove off he allowed her to push him back a couple of steps at the sound of her voice cracking.

There was silence in the distance between them and Curly's lips twisted into another scowl at the way her nostrils flared, breathing deep and fast. He didn't get a chance to catch whatever was in her eyes before she turned and took off back down the hall. It took all his strength not to put a frustrated dent in the door of her locker.

 _I'd always hoped for better_

 _Thought maybe together you and me could find it_


	9. The Crying Game

**Author's Note:** I've written this story a few chapters ahead, but I'm currently writing the last chapter now, so it won't be long until this is all over :(

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from Nicki Minaj's song, The Crying Game. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 _ **Sunday, 2 February 1969**_

 _Is it too late to talk? Did I wait too long?_

 _A thousand words don't change a thing_

 _Is it only three, three words that you're missing?_

Katie had declined Susan's invitation that morning to meet her at Jay's, sure that Dale would be with her, and wherever Dale was Glenn and Curly were usually nearby, too. Katie had spent far too much time avoiding Curly in the past week and a half to put herself in his line of fire again.

Since their fight at school Wednesday before last, she had made a point of refusing to speak to him altogether, even last Thursday afternoon when he had seemingly cooled off a little from their fight and started addressing her again, though it was often to make some snide comment.

It caused many an awkward moment for Susan, Dale and Glenn whenever Katie moved on with another conversation and made it clear she wasn't going to dignify Curly with a response, but at this point she didn't have the energy to care. It was a surprise to her, however, how easily her lack of reaction to Curly clearly frustrated him, and what a thrill she felt every time he shook his head in exasperation or threw his pen down on his desk in tantrum.

So instead of going to Jay's with Susan, Katie hung around at home, watching television, studying a little, and even attempting to clean up for her mom, which was truly testament to how incredibly bored she was by afternoon.

She had just finished cleaning up her bedroom when she decided to do a load of washing with the clothes that had begun to form a small pile in the corner of her room. Not wanting to waste water and detergent, though, she decided to mix her small pile with Rick's to make a full load, and made her way into his bedroom to collect whatever of his clothes needed washing.

She thought it odd to see his bedroom door slightly ajar instead of completely closed, and when she stepped into his room she found him asleep on top of his bed covers. Sunlight poked through the small gaps in his closed blinds and cast shadows over his face.

It struck her, like it had time and time again lately, how dark the circles under his eyes were. His eyelids looked so heavy, and though she hadn't heard him come home last night or this morning and despite the fact that his treatment of her hadn't improved any since she'd gotten in his way at Buck's, she felt a wave of relief wash over her at the sight of him asleep on his bed. He was home. He was safe and sound. And in sleep he looked so much more like the brother she'd had before Mike died.

She frowned at the ache inside of her that stretched its hands out in search of him, wanting so much for her brother to smile at her again, to squeeze her breathless in a hug. She wondered as she tossed his pile of washing into a basket already half full with her clothes what would happen if she were to gently shake Rick awake and tell him that she wanted her brother back.

As she turned to leave the room she figured he would probably tell her that he wanted Mike back, but that they couldn't always get what they wanted.

Katie noticed as she opened his bedroom door to leave that he had discarded a pair of jeans on the floor beside his bed, and when she stood again after picking them up to wash with the rest of the clothes her eyes caught on the half open top drawer of his bedside table, or more accurately, what was in it. By a tiny crack of sunlight she could see notes half fallen out of a bulging sock. She froze in her half turn back to the doorway and peaked a little closer, careful not to make any noise and wake Rick.

There was a lot there. She didn't know how much, but it was certainly more cash than alot of people on their side of town would normally have at one time.

Dread churned in Katie's stomach and she felt the overwhelming clamminess that normally preceded being sick in a toilet bowl. It was just money, she told herself as she rushed out of Rick's room as quietly as possible and tried to take deep breaths, but it wasn't the money that had her struggling to breathe.

 _Welcome to the crying game, where you lose your soul_

 _Where it ain't no easy pass, you got to use the toll_

 _Ain't no cruise control, you 'bout to lose control_

Bradley picked Katie up for school the next morning and Jeff was noticeably absent from the car again. He hadn't been to school since Tuesday last week.

"Is Jeff ever coming back to school?" Katie asked Bradley as he sped through an orange light.

"School ain't for everybody," Bradley said with a shrug.

"Is he working for Rick instead?" Katie asked and Bradley glanced at her warily.

The question had come out bitingly, but for once she didn't feel bad for asking Bradley questions that could put him in an awkward position with her and the gang. After all the years they had known one another, she felt he owed her his honesty at the very least.

"I dunno, Katie," Bradley responded tiredly with a low sigh as he turned the car into the parking lot of Will Rogers High School. "He ain't comin' to school, that's all I know."

Katie turned to him as he pulled into a parking spot and shut off the engine. "You're lying to me," She didn't know when she had started to shake, but she could feel her body quivering now, alive and bursting with rage. "Are you really so loyal to that stupid gang that you'd stoop so low with me?"

"You don't want to know, Katie," Bradley answered, his voice wearing thin with frustration.

"Yes, I do!" she shouted at him, slamming her hand down on the front dashboard of the car and immediately cringing at the pain that shot up her wrist.

"Watch it," Bradley warned with an accusatory finger in her direction and a seriousness that made Katie pause in her next scathing comment. "I'm _not_ having this conversation with you." Then he looked her in the eyes and the hurt in his would have made her feel bad if not for the fact that he had just spoken to her like she was a child. "And my loyalty shouldn't even be in question with you. Did I not keep quiet with Rick about you leaving Buck's with two of Shepard's boys? You think he would be happy about that?"

Katie snorted derisively. "Do you think I was happy about being pushed over in front of a party full of people by my own brother and then being left there stranded by you?"

"I came back for you," Bradley replied, just as Katie knew he would.

It didn't matter that he had come back for her. It mattered that he had left her there. But this wasn't the discussion she had gotten into the car wanting to have.

Katie looked away from Bradley and spotted Susan and the Shepard boys standing around Tim's car. Curly was sitting on the edge of the hood, and when Katie found his eyes she decided that her argument with Bradley was pointless. Rick and the gang were ultimately his first priority. They always had been. She should have known as much the moment Bradley had left her behind at Buck's. He wasn't going to tell her anything he wasn't allowed to.

"Whatever," Katie huffed; grabbing her notebook from the floor of the car and pushing open the car door.

She heard Bradley start to say her name, but it was muffled by the slamming of the car door behind her.

Several cars down Curly watched Bradley Simons climb out of his car after Katie, who was already flying down the aisle of parked cars toward where Susan stood wearing a bored expression as Dale and Glenn talked car engines.

Curly had noticed Bradley's car the moment it turned into the parking lot – a habit he would never admit, but couldn't change as much as he had told himself he should - so he had seen what looked to have been a pretty heated exchange between Katie and Bradley, and grinned to himself when he caught sight of the scowl on Bradley's face as he watched Katie come to a stop beside Susan.

"Are you alright?" Susan asked immediately.

Katie flared her nostrils wide, trying to take deep breaths, and nodded as the warning bell rang from the school building.

Glenn dropped his cigarette on the ground and stepped on it with his boot. Curly stood up from the hood of Tim's car and made to start walking to class with the rest of the group, but Katie caught his eye and stayed still. When Susan glanced back at her she waved the others on and told them she would catch up. Curly couldn't say what possessed him to hang back with her, but he nodded Dale and Glenn on without him anyway.

Curly sat back down on the edge of the car hood and lit up a cigarette. The spark of his lighter sounded unusually loud in the silence between he and Katie, but at least she was looking at him. It was when she refused to look at him that his blood began to boil.

"Lover's quarrel?" Curly asked, looking behind her pointedly at the car she had come from.

"Shut up," she said, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms.

"Wow, I was startin' to forget how pleasant you were to be around," Curly said sarcastically.

"You said that I shouldn't bury my head in the sand," she replied cryptically, ignoring Curly's comment and instead remembering the night they had spent in Susan's lounge room.

"So?" Curly asked with a nonchalant shrug and another drag of his smoke.

Katie bit her lip and looked up at him and he didn't know how he was going to continue being mad at her when she looked at him from under her eyelashes like that.

"I found money," she said quietly, rushing to elaborate. "I wasn't looking for it. I was doing his washing and his drawer was open and I just saw it..." There was a pause and then she added timidly, "There was more there than he has any business having."

Curly didn't need to ask to know that Katie was talking about Rick, and he wasn't surprised at all to hear he was making good money. Still, he didn't understand what she was doing here talking to him about it when she had almost convinced him over the past week and a half that she hated his guts.

"Why're you tellin' me this?"

Katie let out a short, exasperated laugh. "Because you're always so eager to tell me what a bad person he is and now I want to know why."

Curly looked her up and down and knew that the scattered state she was in was probably his doing. He had planted this seed. And here it was – growing. But who was he to deny her the truth?

"You sure?" he asked her. "You ever heard the sayin' 'don't ask questions you don't want the answers to'?"

"I'm asking, aren't I?" she answered shortly, crossing her arms over her chest.

Curly could tell she was trying hard not to tell him to get lost and just figure out the answers herself, and he would have laughed at her struggle to stay calm if his next words weren't going to be such a blow to her gut.

"He sells drugs," he tells her, cringing right away at the half step she took backward in recoil almost immediately after the words were out of his mouth.

She stared at him for so long that he was sure she didn't believe him anyway. The bell rang again and startled her. She jumped and glanced back at the school building as movement behind her caught Curly's eye. Bradley was slinking away from his car toward the school with the last of the stragglers from the parking lot.

Curly turned his attention back to Katie, who was looking down at her shoes now, scuffing them on the ground. She sniffed and then forced herself to look up at him again.

"Thanks," she said in a small voice, and not wanting him to see the childish tears in her eyes she turned to leave.

"Let's get outta here," Curly said, causing her to turn back to him, confused.

Despite her attempt at hiding them, Curly had seen the watery glint in her hazel eyes and forgot that he was meant to be angry at her still. "C'mon," he said, standing up and pulling the keys out of his jeans pocket.

He got behind the wheel of Tim's car and a moment later Katie was beside him in the passenger seat. By the time Bradley got to the main entrance of the school building, they were gone.

 _Where did you go? I couldn't see_

 _I was too busy, could've just said no_

 _Where would you go, I think that I know_

Katie had been to the Shepard house once before. It was in her sophomore year, back when being on Shepard turf got only a groan out of Rick, which would then be followed by Mike whacking him on the shoulder and telling him that she could go where she wanted, she was a girl and they'd taught her how to defend herself well enough anyway.

It looked different now to how it had two years ago, but that probably had something to do with it being daylight this time and the fact that she wasn't drunk off her second beer right now. It was quiet in the house as Curly explained that everyone was gone and that they weren't staying, he just had to grab something.

She followed him up the stairs and stopped in his bedroom doorway. She took in his unmade bed and the distinct smell of boy as he rummaged around in a box from under his bed before retrieving a bottle of whiskey from it.

"Angel's always stealin' my booze, so I gotta hide it," he said with a sheepish grin as he stood up.

"We're gonna drink?" Katie asked, checking the watch on her wrist; it was just after nine in the morning.

"It's what you do when you skip school, dollface," Curly said, smirking at how awkwardly she was standing in his doorway.

He wondered how far he'd get if he were to kiss her right here in his room. He wondered if she was thinking about the same thing, but on second thought he doubted it very much. He had just dropped a bomb on her. The least he could do was give her something to drink and somewhere to let out whatever was in her head right now. He would have to leave luring her further into his bedroom for another day, perhaps when they weren't fresh off a fight that had left her ignoring his existence for almost a fortnight.

"C'mon," he said again, heading out of his room and, grabbing her by the hand on the way, bringing her back downstairs and into the front yard.

They walked a while, handing the bottle between themselves every few minutes or so. Curly laughed at the bitter face Katie pulled after each sip and she called him a liar when he told her it didn't taste _that_ bad.

They made it to the children's playground and park a few blocks from Curly's house and sat down in the sand of the playground.

"This doesn't exactly seem like the most appropriate place to drink," Katie said before taking another gulp of whiskey anyway.

"You a soc or a hood?" Curly teased freely as he took the bottle from Katie's outstretched hand.

Katie let out a short laugh. "My brother's enough of a hood for both of us," she said lowly as she clutched a pile of sand in her fist and let it slowly fall through the small gaps between her fingers.

"Hood or not, we all gotta make money, I guess," Curly responded.

That was as close to defending Rick Thomas as he would get, and it was purely to help make it easier on Katie, not because he'd grown a fondness for her brother overnight.

"He had a job, though," Katie said angrily, running out of sand and refilling her hand. "We made do between that and my mom's jobs. He just never went back after Mike died."

Curly didn't know what to say, so he didn't say anything. He just sat back beside her a little and watched the emotions run wild on her face. She was looking up at the sky, blinking back tears she didn't want to shed for the second time already this morning. She was sick of feeling so useless, unable to fix or change anything. When a tear spilled over onto her cheek she let out a frustrated cry and tossed the sand she held at the set of swings in front of them before burying her head in her hands.

This was well out of Curly's realm of experience. He hardly ever dealt with crying girls unless Angela was so drunk that he couldn't even understand her explanation for why she was crying. But his heart leaped out of his chest at the sound of Katie choking back more tears and his arm moved instinctively to wrap itself around her shoulders.

She leaned back against his arm and turned her cheek to rest on his shoulder, her hand coming up and clutching the front of his shirt tight.

"How did we get here?" she asked, her breath hot against his neck. "How did everything get so crazy?" And then she pulled away from him and he missed her warmth immediately. "And why do I have to deal with it all?" her tone was resentful now. "I didn't ask for any of this. Rick can sell drugs and never come home and pick fights with whoever he wants, but I have to feel guilty for being friends with people I was friends with before he decided to have a major problem with them. How is that fair?"

"It ain't," Curly answered simply before sipping from the bottle and handing it to Katie.

"No," she responded, "it ain't," and then laughed a little.

Maybe the whiskey was starting to take hold of her, but all she could think about was how hypocritical all of the standards and expectations placed on her were. Here she was sitting in a sandbox at a children's playground with a boy she liked – yes, she admitted to herself, she _liked_ him – and she couldn't kiss him because _Rick_ would think it was wrong.

Well Rick didn't give a damn about what Katie thought was right or wrong, so she decided that she didn't have to either and quickly closed the distance between them again.

She faltered at the last moment, though, and pulled up short, her nose almost brushing his. But Curly had anticipated in that quick movement the kiss that she had wanted and he wasn't going to let her pull away again.

As he reached out for her lips with his, he thought to himself that now they were even. She had stolen a kiss from him a fortnight ago, this was just payback. The best kind of payback, he decided, when she scooted closer to him and wrapped her arms around his neck, giving him the best angle to deepen their kiss. His hands found her waist and his fingers stroked a bit of bare skin between her blouse and skirt, giving her goosebumps and a warmth in the pit of her stomach that meant, in this case, that they should stop.

She savored him a few moments longer, though, before pulling away from him again with a contented sigh. She liked how all of the problems just fell away each time they kissed, even if the peace was only momentary.

Curly grinned at her, his lips turned up toward the cheeky glint in his eyes. "Don't you dare tell anyone," he said, mimicking her words right after she had kissed him last.

She gave him a small smile. "I won't if you don't," she said quietly as if somebody might overhear.

Though Curly was eager to hold her to her word, he was wary of how often she changed her mind, constantly afraid of the set of problems that might arise from each decision she made.

"You sure about that?" Curly asked.

"No," she answered, hating the uncertainty in his eyes, but wanting to give him the honesty he had given here earlier. She let out a small laugh. "I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow or if whatever we've got here has any kind of chance." She sighed. "But I want to give it one."

She hadn't wanted to admit it at the time, but Curly was right about her being miserable. She had spent the past two months grieving, anxious and afraid, and Rick played a big part in that, but she was sick of it now. She wanted a change, and she needed to make it herself.

Curly laughed and it lit Katie up. "I s'pose that'll have to be good enough for now," he said, grabbing her hand and pulling him back to her, but she pulled away and gave him an even look.

"You don't sell drugs, too, do you?" she asked, suddenly afraid she might be trading one devil for another.

"Nah," he grinned, "mostly I just lift car parts – the usual JD stuff."

Katie frowned. "Craig used to sell grass," she said, remembering the way it had smelt when Craig Chambers had smoked around her a couple of times when they had dated briefly.

Curly's eyebrows furrowed, but he answered her. "Tim's not really a fan of any of that stuff. He thinks it'll be the death of the gangs."

Katie wondered if he meant that literally or figuratively. "It's not just grass Rick's selling, is it?"

Curly shook his head and after a moment of taking it in, Katie finally nodded and gave him a sad smile. When he moved to pull her in close again, she didn't resist. She melted against him and wished that she didn't ever have to go home. She knew she would, though. At the end of the school day she would need Curly to drive her home. But they still had several more hours until that time and she decided to spend them enjoying what she could loosely call a first date.

She and Curly laughed and teased one another; they talked about school and how neither of them had any clue what they wanted to do after graduation. They finished the bottle of whiskey and swung on the swings, trying to swing higher than the other before jumping off and landing in a ball of limbs, cackling their heads off the whole time. They lay under a nearby tree and Katie admired the perfection of the blue sky above them and Curly's fingers trailing softly up and down her arms. At one point she dozed and Curly dared not move a muscle, hoping that the dark circles under her eyes would lighten and disappear the longer he let her sleep.

He had no idea how things between he and Katie were going to work from here on out, or if they would even work at all. He didn't know if it was a smart move to tell Tim, but not telling him would just mean bigger trouble if he were to find out another way. He didn't know what would happen to Katie if Rick found out, and he realized that there was a chance she would be in danger now because of his own selfish want to be close to her. But for today everything was fine, better than fine, even – better than anything had been in a while.

 _Sayin' we don't miss each other, but it's all ficticious_

 _Sayin' that we had enough, but enough of what?_

 _Another slap to the face, another uppercut_

 _I'm just abusive by nature, not 'cause I hate ya_


	10. Clarity

**Author's Note:** Can you believe it's almost over? I've finished writing this story already and there's only five more chapters left to come, but I have plans for a side-fic and sequel swirling around in my head, so I doubt this will be the last you see from me :)

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from Zedd's song, Clarity. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 _ **Friday, 7 February 1969**_

 _Fight fear for the selfish pain, it was worth it every time_

 _Hold still right before we crash 'cause we both know how this ends_

 _A clock ticks 'til it breaks your glass and I drown in you again_

Rick stomped down the stairs and into the kitchen where Katie was leaning against the counter eating a bowl of cereal. He walked past her with his head down and pulled a glass out of a cupboard and filled it with water. He stood at the kitchen sink and drank it, looking out at their backyard from the kitchen window.

Katie finished her cereal and moved to rinse her bowl out in the sink. She hesitated when she turned around to see Rick standing in front of it, but chose to push down the urge to stay out of his way and go ahead and rinse her bowl anyway. Reaching past him she turned the kitchen tap on and started washing the bowl under the stream of water that jetted out into the sink basin.

"It's your birthday today, right?" Rick asked, and the shock of his voice caused her to drop her bowl in the sink with a clatter and look up at him in alarm.

It took a moment for her to realize he had only asked her a harmless question and she quickly nodded before turning off the tap and abandoning the bowl in the sink. She wanted to get out of there; she didn't want to be so close to him when such big secrets stood between them.

"Happy birthday, kid," he said, his voice was void of the rough abruptness she had gotten used to from him lately.

He almost sounded like himself, and it was enough to make Katie stop in her tracks out of the kitchen to turn around and face him again. He was looking back at her, his eyes dark and his hair and stubble messy. He looked like he'd just woken up and she decided that this early morning version of him was much like the sleeping version of him she'd seen last Sunday when she had found a big wad of cash in the drawer of his bedside table. He seemed less menacing and more human like this.

"Thanks," she said quietly and silence fell between them as she watched him take his last sip of water and discard the glass in the sink with her bowl.

"Can we go for milkshakes after school?" he asked awkwardly, scratching the back of his head a little sheepishly.

"Uh," Katie began, not sure why he was taking interest in her again, but liking it anyway, "sure," she said as a familiar car horn sounded out the front. "You'll pick me up from school?" she asked and he nodded back.

Katie gave Rick a quick smile and a small wave and took off out of the house, down the front steps and into the front yard with a little more of a skip in her step.

The car ride to school was mostly in silence aside from the polite hellos she and Bradley shared when she climbed into his car. It had been like this since their fight on Monday morning. She refused to apologize for doubting his loyalty to her, he had given her reason to and that hadn't changed. He was probably only still picking her up for school and dropping her home because Rick wanted one of his boys keeping an eye on her, which was confusing considering that he'd been doing his best to ignore and steer clear of her for about a month now.

"Rick's picking me up this afternoon," she told him as he pulled into a parking spot in front of the school.

She didn't elaborate on why Rick was taking her for a milkshake after school and she figured Bradley didn't care or hadn't remembered, anyway. She was surprised Rick had even remembered, but then again, he hadn't, not really. The only one who had genuinely remembered was Susan, who had been asking her every day this week what she wanted to do to celebrate. Each day Katie had told her that she didn't want to make a fuss, that it didn't matter, to please not tell anybody. She didn't feel like there was very much to celebrate this year.

Bradley just shrugged in response and Katie climbed out of the car and headed over to Susan and the Shepard boys. She tried hard to stifle the smile that crept onto her lips as she approached the group, particularly Curly who sat lazily beside Glenn on the hood of Glenn's car, one leg up and his elbow resting on it occasionally moving to bring his cigarette up to his lips for a draw.

"Hey," she greeted them once she was in earshot of the group and Susan spun around looking like a deer caught in the headlights.

"Hey, birthday girl," Glenn said back, a teasing grin on his face.

Katie faltered and gaped at Glenn before rounding on Susan. "You told them?"

"Yeah," Curly answered for Susan, flicking his cigarette onto the ground and letting it die there, "the real question is, why didn't you?"

There was a bite to his tone and Katie could tell he wasn't just teasing like Glenn.

"I'm sorry," Susan said, her face pitying and apologetic, "I just didn't think it was nice for your eighteenth birthday to go uncelebrated."

"But I wanted it like that," Katie responded, annoyed and flicking a quick glance at Curly whose hard eyes were burning holes into her skin, "I've been telling you that all week."

"Cool it, Thomas," Dale stepped in, "she just wanted to give you a good birthday."

"I thought we could all go bowling," Susan said hopefully.

"Rick's taking me out after school," Katie declined and jealousy flared through Curly at the thought of one outing with Rick putting second or third thoughts into her head about the new but shaky ground they'd been on this week.

"Well we could go to the nightly double tonight instead," Susan said, biting her lip in deliberation.

Katie looked reluctant and with a roll of his eyes Curly said, "Your friend wants to celebrate your birthday, just let her."

Katie shot Curly a glare before huffing and giving Susan a nod. Susan's squeal of delight was drowned out by the school bell and the group started making their way up to the school building. Susan walked a little ahead with Dale and Glenn, excitedly chattering about the new movie that would be playing at the nightly double tonight.

Katie held back a beat to fall in step with Curly. She gave him a careful look, hoping to gauge whether he was really mad at her or not. When he kept walking and refused to meet her eye, she knew he was pissed off.

"What's wrong?" she asked, careful not to speak loud enough for the others in front to hear her.

"A bit of a heads up before your birthday would've been nice," he brooded.

"Well you know now anyway," Katie bit back, annoyed at him being annoyed over something so stupid.

"You didn't want me to know, though," he said sounding ridiculously petty to Katie's ears.

"I didn't want _anyone_ to know," she said, stopping and turning to face him.

He stopped, too, and mirrored her. "Why? What's the problem?" he hissed, leaning down closer to her so that the others, who had stopped to wait for them, couldn't hear.

Katie glanced over to where Susan, Dale and Glenn were standing and observing whatever was going on between her and Curly. They had managed to be discreet about things this past week, but right now they weren't doing so well at that.

Rolling her eyes, she grabbed Curly's arm and yanked him forward toward the school, hissing back at him, "People are looking, we'll talk about it at lunch."

Curly grumbled but complied and Katie hoped he would get over his mood by lunch time. She didn't want to waste what little time she had with him arguing.

When lunch time came, though, she waved Susan off to find Dale with promises of catching up with her later and then bypassed the locker she was meant to be depositing her books in and turned down a corridor and into an art supplies room to find Curly still looking as sour as he had that morning.

"Really?" Katie sighed, putting her books down on a spare bit of shelf lined with tins of paint. "What is the big deal about not wanting to make a big deal of today?"

"The big deal," Curly said as he pushed off the shelf he'd been leaning on and made his way forward toward her, "is that some people would've liked to have made a big deal of today."

"I told Susan I didn't want –"

"Susan wanted to make you happy on your birthday," Curly said, placing both hands on her small shoulders, only just resisting the urge to shake her for having to be so difficult.

"Do you know what would make me happy on my birthday?" she asked, looking at him matter of factly. He raised an eyebrow at her and her lips pulled up into a sly grin. "For you to stop being mad at me and kiss me," she said, taking his hands from her shoulders and placing them on her waist.

He grinned despite the lingering annoyance in him. He really didn't want to be mad at her on her birthday, so he let her lean into him and take away whatever problem he'd had. They only had ten minutes together before they had to meet up with the others, any longer and the cover of Katie just going to put her books in her locker would be well and truly blown.

The mention of Katie going out with Rick after school still weighed heavily at the back of his mind, but he made a conscious effort to ignore it and deal with it on a day that wasn't hers.

 _Don't speak as I try to leave 'cause we both know what we'll choose_

 _If you pull then I'll push too deep and I'll fall right back to you_

Katie didn't hang around and walk with Susan and the Shepard boys after their last class, choosing to hurry out into the parking lot as soon as the school bell rang, not because of excitement for her afternoon with Rick, but because she didn't want him to spot her walking out of school with Curly or any of his friends.

Her nerves about going out with Rick this afternoon had grown throughout the school day. His offer had been so out of character for the person he'd been acting like lately, but so in character with the person he had been a few months ago. That made her hopeful, that maybe he was getting over whatever mood he'd been stuck in for the past two months, but part of her was afraid that he was luring her into a confrontation. Perhaps he knew about Curly, or maybe he had heard she was hanging out with the Shepard boys at school. She didn't think that Bradley would have told Rick about that because he'd had plenty of chances to already, but maybe after their argument on Monday he had said something...

He was there in his car waiting for her when she came across the school lawn and she tossed her books on his backseat before climbing in next to him.

"How was school?" he asked, a harmless enough question but strained nonetheless.

"Fine," Katie replied, glancing at Rick sideways for any sign on his face of him knowing all about her day, especially a certain part of it... She was being paranoid. His face gave away nothing. "Where're we going?"

"Jay's," Rick responded as he pulled his car out of the parking lot and onto the main road.

Katie pushed back the disappointment that tickled her stomach. She had thought that maybe he would take her to Angelo's, a little ice-cream place not far from the Ribbon that he and Mike used to take her to after school sometimes.

They drove the rest of the way and entered Jay's with awkward silence between them, only speaking to give their orders at the front counter before taking seats across from one another at a vacant table with their milkshakes.

"So," Rick said finally after his first slurp of the milkshake.

Katie glanced up at him from her straw and slightly embarrassed at her loss for words, repeated him, "So..."

Rick looked at her for a long moment before leaning forward in his seat and resting his elbows on the table between them. "I hear you've taken a sudden interest in the going ons of my gang."

Katie's eyes shot back down to the straw she was sipping her milkshake through, trying to lengthen her sip and look sincerely oblivious to what he was talking about. Bradley, was all she thought. Bradley must have told him. The only other person she'd spoken to about Brumly business was Curly. Dread turned her numb; had Bradley told Rick anything about Curly, or Dale or Glenn, aswell?

"What do you mean?" she asked, feigning confusion when she finally swallowed her mouthful of cold vanilla milkshake.

Rick's jaw clenched slightly, but it was enough for Katie to realize that he was trying very hard to keep his composure.

"I want you to cut it out," Rick said, his lips thin and his words authoritative, like she was still the baby sister that followed him blindly. "Gang business is between me and my gang; you don't need to know anythin' more."

"So I'm not supposed to wonder or worry about where you're going whenever you leave the house and what you're doing?" Katie asked, the bold words slipping out before she could check herself. Rick just lent back in his seat again and gave her a look like that was exactly what she was supposed to do, but that wasn't good enough for her anymore. "Does mom know what you do and where you go?"

"No."

"Does she know how you make the money you're always giving her for bills?" she asked, pushing her milkshake away from her. The milk was churning inside of her and making her feel ill.

Rick's eyes narrowed at her and she knew that he was internally questioning just how much Katie knew about his money making methods. "It doesn't matter; she wouldn't be able to keep the roof over all our heads if it weren't for that money."

That wasn't something that had occurred to Katie yet. She had never paid much attention to the finances, just knowing that there was never really much of it. Even if her mom knew that the money paying their bills was from the sale of drugs, she wouldn't be in a position to refuse it.

Katie looked down at her milkshake. She hadn't thought twice about it, but Rick had paid for it.

"I don't want this," she said, pushing it further away from her.

"Jesus, Katie," Rick groaned, dragging a frustrated hand over his face. "I brought you here 'cause I wanted to see you for your birthday. Stop makin' it so damn difficult."

But she would've preferred going to Angelo's over Jay's, and he would've known that. If Mike were still here that's where they would probably be right now, together.

A bit of anger deflated in Katie and she decided to try again. "Do you remember last year when Mike tried baking me a cake?" she asked, thinking of how their mom had had to work all day on her last birthday, much like today, and instead of buying a cake Mike had decided to make his first attempt at baking. He had wanted the cake to be pink for her, but hadn't realized that he'd used strawberry essence instead of pink food coloring. It had tasted dreadful. She missed him.

"I don't want to talk about him," Rick said sharply, looking away and pushing his milkshake forward, disinterested, like Katie had done with her own.

Her face fell and she didn't know what she had expected from Rick this afternoon, but this wasn't it. He hadn't asked her how her birthday had been so far or if she had plans to celebrate tonight. He hadn't brought her here because he'd wanted to see her for her birthday; he had brought her here because he wanted to squash her curiosity over what his gang was up to. And she despised him for it.

"I want to go home now," she told him and his only response was kicking up out of his chair and making a beeline for the front door. She followed him out into the cool air and the silence during the drive home crushed her.

Katie flung herself onto her bed the instant she was up the stairs and behind her closed bedroom door. She heard Rick's bedroom door slam closed behind him, and the vibration it sent through the house tipped Katie over into tears. She sobbed quietly into her pillow until she heard the creak of Rick's door reopening. His heavy footsteps descended the stairs and a moment later the front door slammed closed. Katie sat up on her bed and glanced out her window just in time to catch him gun the engine of his car and pull out into the street.

Katie wondered what his response would've been if she had told him that she knew he and the gang were selling drugs. Before he would've cared that he had disappointed her, but it was clear he didn't care much about anything anymore. She just didn't understand when he had stopped considering her something worth caring about, or how he could do that.

She sighed, resenting him more and more as the minutes passed, and decided that she should've just gone straight back to Susan's with her and the guys instead of wasting her time on Rick. She stood up in front of her mirror and wiped at the little black marks of mascara that had run a little bit. She pulled her hair out of its pony tail and let it fall around her face. The skirt she had worn to school was discarded and replaced by pants and a coat because though the weather had started to warm up a little in the last couple of weeks the evenings were still quite frosty.

When she was ready she left the house and walked the several blocks over to Susan's place where she recognized Tim's car parked in the driveway and walked through the front door to find Susan, Curly, Dale and Glenn lazing around in the lounge room.

Curly's head shot up mid-conversation at the sound of the front door opening and it was only a small shock to see Katie standing there.

"That was quick," Susan remarked from where she sat atop Dale in an armchair as Katie walked further into the lounge room and flopped down next to Curly on the couch.

"There wasn't much to talk about," Katie replied, her hand itching to move an inch and touch Curly's.

"You walked here?" Curly asked and Katie nodded. "We could've come and got you."

"Do I really need to worry about being jumped by Shepard boys?" Katie asked, looking around at the others skeptically. "I'm fine."

She was right, Curly supposed. He wouldn't put it past one of Brumly's guys to attack Angela if she were walking around alone, but he didn't think his buddies would do the same to a Brumly girl. They were still firm on leaving girls out of gang issues.

"No you ain't," Glenn said, leaning forward from the other armchair in the room to push a bottle of rum on the table in the middle of all of them toward Katie. "But you will be."

She didn't really feel like getting drunk tonight, but took a swig anyway and found that Glenn was right. She felt better the moment the hot liquor began to spread through her body.

Conversation started back up and before long it was time for the five teenagers to toddle out of Susan's house and pile into Tim's car. Glenn offered the birthday girl the front seat and Curly drove them all to the drive-in cinema.

Katie and Curly waited in the car while Glenn, Dale and Susan went off to get popcorn. Katie didn't want to risk a River King or Brumly boy being at the nightly double and catching sight of her there with a few Shepard boys. They were safer in the darkness of the car, and Curly was more than happy to have a quiet moment alone with her.

"Do you wanna talk about Rick?" he asked, sensing that something had happened earlier between him and Katie.

Katie sighed, so sick of thinking and talking about her stupid brother. "It had nothing to do with my birthday and everything to do with getting me to stop asking questions."

Curly was quiet for a long moment, waiting for Katie to elaborate. "What exactly does he know?" he asked when the silence became obvious that Katie wasn't going to continue without prompting.

"Bradley told him," she said and Curly remembered the look on Bradley's face on Monday morning when he had watched Katie talk to Curly in the parking lot, and Curly was fairly sure that he might have seen them taking off together, or at least put two and two together when neither Katie or Curly were in school for the rest of the day. Glenn and Dale had questioned him about it that afternoon and Curly had told them that he'd taken Katie somewhere to cool off about a few things and to keep their mouths shut about it. He could guess they probably had their suspicions of what was going on, but neither of them had brought the matter up again since.

"About you and me?" Curly asked and Katie shook her head.

"I don't think so," she said giving him a funny look. "Just that I was asking about what Rick and his guys were getting up to. How would Bradley know about us?"

"Well he knows I got you out of Bucks when," he stopped short of referring to the party as the night Rick had split her forehead open, "Rick and Tim had that fight. And he was watching us Monday morning after you got out of his car."

Katie was thoughtful for a minute. "I don't understand why he wouldn't tell Rick if he knows something's going on with us."

She remembered the hurt on his face when she had accused him of being loyal to the gang over her. He had even pointed out that he could have very easily told Rick about Katie leaving Buck's with Curly and Dale, but then he had gone and told Rick she was sticking her nose where it shouldn't be with the gang and still not told him about the Shepard issue. It didn't make sense.

Curly had long suspected Bradley of having some form of infatuation for Katie, but even he had to admit he didn't know why Bradley wouldn't tell Rick about them when doing so would probably cause a big problem for Katie and Curly's relationship, leaving Bradley to swoop in and give Katie an easy way out and back into Rick's good graces... One thing was for sure, neither of them trusted Bradley.

The back car door opened and Katie and Curly jumped, not noticing until now how close they had been sliding along the bench seat to each other. Susan, Dale and Glenn piled into the back seat again and handed Curly and Katie a bucket of popcorn. Any chance at continuing their conversation was over, so Katie and Curly settled in for the movie that was starting on the big screen in front of them.

About half way through the movie Curly's hand slowly crept across the seat and found Katie's resting in her lap. She stifled a grin and a sideways glance at him. Not long after, the squelching of mixing saliva and kissing started up in the back seat and Glenn groaned theatrically. He climbed out of the car pretty soon after that, claiming to have caught sight of a girl, Cindy, who he'd taken out on a date last weekend and who had never called him back.

Curly thought Glenn had the right idea and, not wanting to sit in the car any longer with Dale and Susan making out the way they were, told the group that he was going to the toilet. Katie let him go and a few seconds got out of the car and followed after him toward the back of the concession stand where the toilet block stood.

Instead of going into the men's room, though, Curly continued off the footpath and turned the corner and out of Katie's sight. She followed him around the corner where the light from the bathrooms and concession stand didn't quite reach and he grabbed her by the wrist and spun her around until her back was up against the brick wall and he was hovering over her.

"You didn't really need to use the bathroom, did you?" she asked, laughing lightly.

"No," he answered, staring down at her intently and admiring the way her eyes shone in the moonlight.

His eyes moved to her pink lips and she felt a hot blush creeping up her neck as he looked the rest of her up and down. He moved closer to her and Katie let out a sweet sigh when he lent down to kiss her with a hunger that left her aching for more of him when he pulled away slightly for air. Groaning like a spoiled child denied her favorite toy she arched her back forward and reached for the belt loops of his jeans, pulling him as close to her as possible.

Curly kissed her again, smirking against her lips knowing that she could feel the hardness between them, before moving his lips to trail her jaw line all the way up to her ear. "I could sneak you into my place tonight, you know," he said, nicking her earlobe with his teeth and reveling in the shiver he felt go through her.

She wanted to. With her body flush against his it was all she wanted to be closer, but her mom had left for work before Katie had woken up this morning and she wanted to see her.

"My mom hasn't seen me today yet," she said regretfully.

Katie had told them that already earlier at Susan's house, so Curly was expecting that to be Katie's response, but he'd thought he would try anyway. He kissed down her neck instead of replying, trying to resist the urge to leave a mark that would declare her his as he gently nipped and sucked bits of her flowery smelling skin before finally reigning himself in and blowing a huge raspberry on her neck. Katie squealed and tried to wriggle away from him, but his hands clamped down tight on her hips and held her in place as he nuzzled his head into the crook of her neck, eliciting a string of giggles and _don't_ s from her.

Later when he and the others dropped Katie home a few houses down from her place she wished she could do more than offer him the same thanks she had given Susan, Dale and Glenn for hanging out with her on her birthday. Maybe she would on another day, at another time.

Tim's car stayed where it had pulled up on the side of the street until Katie reached her house and before walking up the driveway and heading inside, she glanced back into the headlights and gave Curly one last smile.

"Is that you, Katie?" her mom called out from upstairs when she closed the front door behind her and made her way up the stairs.

Rick's car hadn't been in the driveway and she was relieved to find her mom sitting cross-legged on her bed, her jewelry box sitting in front of her.

"Just me," Katie said, standing in Shirley Thomas' doorway.

"Happy birthday," Shirley beamed up at Katie and patted the area of bed beside her. Katie moved into the room and sat down with her mom. "This," Shirley said, taking Katie's palm and placing something cold into it, "is for you." Katie looked down at the piece of jewelry in her hand. It was a gold chain bracelet with a small padlock designed into it. "My mom gave it to me when I turned eighteen," Shirley explained with a sad smile, no doubt remembering a special moment in her life with a mother that was years gone now, "and now I'm giving it to you, and one day you'll give it to your daughter."

Katie closed the hand the bracelet sat in and smiled at her mom. "Thank you," she said quietly, before opening her hand again and slipping the bracelet onto her wrist.

"Beautiful," Shirley beamed again, "like you, my dear." She moved the jewelry box down onto the floor by her bed before turning back to Katie and wrapping her up in a warm hug. "How was your day?" she asked, pulling Katie down onto the pillows with her and placing a kiss on top of her daughter's blonde hair.

Katie wanted so much to tell her about a boy with dark, curly hair and deep, blue eyes and how he was infuriating and kind and protective and funny. She wanted to tell her mom how he was honest even when it was going to hurt and how her heart beat faster when he looked at her. But with a bitter pang in her chest she realize she couldn't say any of those things in case her mom were to mention it to Rick.

So instead she told Shirley that Rick had taken her for a milkshake that afternoon and how she and a few of her friends from school, Susan among them, had just seen a new movie. She reminded her mom of the cake Mike had baked for Katie a year ago today and they laughed together the way she wished she'd been able to do with Rick at Jay's.

 _'Cause you are the piece of me I wish I didn't need_

 _Chasing relentlessly, still fight and I don't know why_

 _If our love is tragedy why are you my remedy?_

 _If our love's insanity why are you my clarity?_


	11. Seven Years

**Author's Note:** Thanks again for the reviews and alerts, etc! Be sure to check out this story's side-fic, A Day in the Life, for more on Tim and Jodie's side of things.

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from Lukas Graham's song, Seven Years. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 _ **Sunday, 16 February 1969**_

 _It was a big, big world, but we thought we were bigger_

 _Pushing each other to the limits, we were learning quicker_

"So," Susan started, looking over the top of her sandwich to where Katie was sitting across from her at Susan's kitchen table, "I think I've let this go on too long."

Katie glanced around Susan's kitchen, confused at what she could possibly mean. Katie had come over to help Susan move her sister, Kim's, stuff out of her house and into Kim's new place with her fiancé. There hadn't really been much to move and it had only taken an hour and a half to get everything out of the house, leaving the two girls with the afternoon at their disposal.

"What're you talking about?" Katie asked once she swallowed a mouthful of her sandwich.

"I wanted to wait for you to tell me when you were ready, but I'm starting to wonder if that's ever gonna happen without me pushing you to it," Susan responded. When Katie gave her another oblivious look, she blurted out, "I know something is going on with you and Curly."

Katie froze mid-chew and stared at her friend, a million possibilities flying through her head. Had Curly told one of his friends? Had they told Susan? Maybe Susan had seen what was supposed to be a covert moment.

She supposed it wasn't the worst thing in the world for Susan to know. She knew she could count on her friend to lock this one in the vault, but the thought of anybody outside of she and Curly knowing what was going on between them made her uneasy. First one other person would find out, and then another, and then another, and that was how secrets never stayed secret.

Katie put her sandwich down on her plate, swallowed the food still in her mouth, and looked at Susan evenly. "What exactly do you know?"

"Just my suspicions," Susan replied with a shrug of her shoulders. "It was pretty obvious once I was paying attention. The way the two of you look at each other like you're having your own separate conversation together in your heads," she said before taking another bite of her sandwich and continuing with the food in her mouth, "And did you really think that we wouldn't notice the two of you skipped school together Monday before last?"

So Dale and Glenn knew, too. "You never said anything," she said lamely, remembering the anxiety she had felt that Monday night before school the next day, trying to figure out what she was going to say when somebody brought up the fact that Katie and Curly had both been missing from school the day before after both arriving in the morning… But nobody had said anything and Katie had been more than happy to ignore it with them.

Susan shrugged her shoulders again and looked down at her plate, her eyebrows knitting together. "I figured you would tell me about it sooner or later," she looked back up at Katie and it was clear that Katie's lack of secret sharing with her was hurting her, "but you didn't."

Katie sighed her apology, "I'm sorry," she said, "I should have told you. Honestly, I still don't know what's really going on with Curly and I, or how it's possibly going to work out when Rick is so dead against his gang, so I guess I just wanted to keep it quiet until I worked things out for myself."

Susan nodded knowingly. "Dale said that Curly told him the two of you skipped school because he needed to take you somewhere to cool off," she explained. "Dale told Glenn and I that was all it was and it didn't matter, but I still don't even know what you were so upset about that morning."

Katie could see no other way around things, especially if she wanted her friend to understand and trust her, so with another sigh she told her best friend about the money she had found in Rick's drawer and how ashamed she had felt when Curly had told her that Rick was selling drugs. She honestly didn't know much about it, but she had seen enough at parties and heard enough stories from people at school to know that the kinds of drugs Rick was selling were dangerous to those buying them.

Katie told Susan that Rick and Bradley treated her like a child, kept secrets from her as if she couldn't handle the truth, and that she honestly hadn't known if she _could_ handle the truth until Curly had given it to her anyway. She admitted to her lunch time rendezvous with Curly in an arts supply room around the corner from her locker at school and that even though she was so conflicted by all of the obstacles she and Curly faced, they didn't matter when she was with him. Everything just kind of fell away when he was so close to her.

"You don't have to hide it, you know," Susan said, finishing her last bite of her sandwich. "I mean obviously you can't tell Rick, but you don't have to hide it around me, or Dale and Glenn for that matter." She was wrong, though. If Bradley could betray Katie and dob her in to Rick for her question-asking, then who was to say that Dale and Glenn wouldn't do the same and go running to Tim the moment Katie and Curly acted like a real couple around them. "If they were gonna tell Tim they would have done it by now. I'm not the only one that's noticed the two of you acting differently together."

Katie considered it for a moment as she chewed on her sandwich, but then shook her head and said, "It's better this way, for now."

She thought she was doing the right thing, keeping it quiet and keeping herself and Curly as safe as possible because surely Rick wouldn't react well if he were to find out, but she had a little, niggly feeling that she was purposely keeping a distance between herself and Curly. She was keeping him at arm's length, trying not to get attached. She knew in some part of her mind that this would not work out well.

"Can you catch the bus with me next Monday?" Katie asked, changing the subject abruptly. "Rick's car's goin' into the shop on Friday and won't be out 'til Monday afternoon."

 _By eleven smoking herb and drinking burning liquor_

 _Never rich so we were out to make that steady figure_

"Angel, don't you have homework or somethin'?" Tim said from his armchair in their lounge room on Wednesday night.

Curly snorted derisively and Angela stared at Tim like he'd just grown a second head.

"Are you serious?" she asked.

"Yes, we gotta have at least one Shepard graduate and Curly's too dumb for that," Tim responded playfully, but the comment ground Curly's gears.

"I'm watching this!" Angela exclaimed, pointing at the television.

"Not anymore," Tim said, getting up and turning the television off.

Angela glared up at Tim for a few moments before backing down and with several rude words muttered under her breath she got up and left.

"Fuckin' hell," Tim cussed, shaking his and sitting back down in his armchair. "Everything's gotta be a fuckin' tantrum with her." Curly didn't respond because if he did he would tell Tim that he could've just asked Curly to go into the kitchen with him. "Pete's comin' round in a minute; you wanna go out to Jay's with us?"

"Sure," Curly answered.

He didn't particularly like Pete all that much, but going somewhere that was always packed with people with somebody like his brother was usually a pretty good time. They never just stuck with the group they'd walked in with, they would travel around the diner, greeting the Tigers and talking about who was in the slammer and who was freshly out, girls would come up and flirt, and sometimes there was a fight or two. It was never boring.

"How's things with school?" Tim asked.

"Fine," Curly replied with a shrug of his shoulders, "we ain't gotten in anymore fights with Brumly. One of their boys hasn't been to school in a while, and the other one ain't been in this week."

"Rick been hangin' round much?"

"He's been droppin' Katie off and pickin' her up this week."

"No trouble?"

"Nah, just looks."

Tim nodded and lent back in his armchair, thinking the information over. "Glenn mentioned you and Katie were gettin' along better."

Damn it, Glenn. What else had he told Tim?

"We're civil," Curly covered, not liking the interest Tim had in her. "She's a girl, she can hang out with whoever she wants, right?"

"I don't think Rick would be cool with that, but I don't give a shit," Tim said, and the look he gave Curly then was analysing, something ticking away behind his eyes.

"She can handle her own brother, I guess," Curly replied, trying to sound as though he was tired of talking about something, or someone, he didn't care about.

"You ready?" came Pete's voice as he walked in through the front door, ending any further conversation of Katie, which was perfectly fine by Curly.

"Yeah," Tim answered, standing up and grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair. "Curly's comin', too."

Pete nodded, "Dale and Glenn said they were heading down there, too."

That got Curly's attention. It was going to be a good night for sure.

When they walked into the busy diner and Curly scanned the people in the room to find Dale and Glenn, his eyes landed on Katie and Susan instead. Katie's own scanning eyes found Curly's a second later and a long look passed between them. Katie looked down first, returning to the food and whatever conversation she had been having with Susan.

A few looks like that was all Curly was going to be able to get from her tonight in a place loaded with people who knew Rick and loved trouble. Needless to say it wasn't the great night Curly had thought it would be.

Friday night at Susan's place turned out to be better. Some good music, a lot of beer, just Curly, Katie, Susan, Dale and Glenn. Lots of laughter, the kind of laughter that burst out of them loud and hoarse. When Susan and Dale retired to her bedroom and Glenn lay passed out in his armchair, Katie and Curly flirted like they'd done the first night they'd stayed in that lounge room. She fell asleep first, and he watched her until sleep came for him, too.

 _Something about that glory just always seemed to bore me_

 _'Cause only those I really love will ever really know me_

Katie walked home from Susan's the next morning and when she walked up the driveway of her house and noticed Troy King's car parked in it, Katie hoped she would be able to avoid having to see Jodie, who was surely the one who had driven Troy's car there.

When Katie got inside she could hear the muffled words of an argument going on upstairs, probably in Rick's room. Katie hoped that her brother's bedroom door was closed so that she could pass by it for her own room without be noticed. If Rick was pissed it was best to stay out of his way, Katie had come to learn.

When she reached the top of the stairs, though, the tiff in Rick's room fell silent and before Katie could walk past his room he was standing in her path, a malicious glint in his eyes.

"I heard somethin' interesting last night," he began, walking toward her slowly.

Katie's blood ran cold with dread, feeling like she was about to be washed away by the storm brewing on Rick's face.

"What's that?" She tried to ask nonchalantly as Jodie appeared in Rick's doorway, her eyebrows pushed together anxiously.

"Why don't you tell me where you were last night."

Katie glanced at Jodie and then back at Rick, still trying to feign innocence. Clearly Rick had found something out and Katie had better tread lightly.

"At Susan's place," she answered, more quietly and nervously than she'd intended.

"And where did you go after that night at Buck's?" Rick persisted, "'Cause I know you weren't there when Brad and Jeff went back for you."

"I went back to Susan's place," Katie responded again, deathly aware and afraid of where Rick was going with this.

"And who else was at Susan's place both nights?" he growled as he advanced further toward Katie.

Panic exploded in Katie as her instinct took over and sent her side-stepping out of Rick's path, his hand just falling short of grasping her wrist. She wasn't quick enough for him, though, and when he caught her around the waist and flung her against the hallway wall opposite his room, she realised that avoiding his attack had all but confirmed her guilt to him.

Katie heard Jodie yell something at Rick, but the words were lost to Katie's ears. All she could make out was the sound of herself choking, Rick's hand holding her against the wall by the top of her throat.

"Which one was it?" He demanded through bared teeth, his eyes so full of hatred – was it for her or whoever he was referring to? "Which of Shepard's boys were you screwing?!"

She tried to shake her head, tried to tell him that he had misunderstood whatever he had been told. Just as the corners of her vision started to cloud and she closed her eyes to the thought that maybe Rick's face was going to be the last thing she ever saw, she felt his hand release her throat and her body crumble to the ground. She caught herself with her arms and gasped air into her lungs as she looked up to see Rick stumbling around with Jodie latched onto his back, her hands covering his face and most of his vision.

Katie allowed herself three quick breaths of air before bolting for the staircase, half running and half falling down them, and reached for the baseball bat that Rick kept by the front door. Her hands wrapped around the bat as she went back up the stairs. When she reached the top Rick's back was to her, standing over Jodie who he must've finally managed to throw off of him.

"I bet you're screwin' Shepard, too," he was spitting at her where she cowered below him. "You're both fuckin' traitors."

"Don't touch her, Rick," Katie spoke loudly, extending the baseball bat toward him warningly, though it shook wildly.

Rick glanced back at Katie and barked with laughter as he turned to face her front on.

"What're you gonna do with that?" he asked mockingly in the kind of voice that would normally make her two feet tall, but Katie felt taller than ever standing against him in that moment. "You can't hurt me."

His attention had been turned off Jodie for just long enough for her to get to her feet and move around him to just out of his peripheral vision, when Katie yelled at her, "Get the car running!" and Jodie took off for the stairs.

Rick leaped after her, but Katie blocked him by swinging the baseball bat back and propelling it around to hit Rick hard in the stomach. The blow pushed him back a few steps and sent him tumbling down onto his backside, his hands clutching his stomach. She saw him trying to suck in air and knew she had winded him, which gave her a good head start.

She dropped the bat before taking off down the stairs again and out through the open front door, gripping the door handle on her way out and slamming it shut behind her. She hoped to God Jodie hadn't just taken off without her and she felt a wave of cool relief wash over her when she saw Troy's car sitting out on the street, the passenger door open and waiting for her. Katie ran for it and Jodie's foot was on the gas the moment Katie was in.

 _I only see my goals, I don't believe in failure_

 _'Cause I know the smallest voices, they can make it major_

Curly woke up for the second time on Saturday to the sound of the telephone ringing downstairs. Curly had succumbed to his hangover when he'd gotten home from Susan's place that morning and fallen back asleep on his bed. He groaned as he rolled over and muttered a hallelujah when the ringing cut out early. Someone downstairs had picked it up.

Curly was just falling under again when Tim yelled his name from downstairs. Curly ignored it until Tim was banging on his bedroom door.

"What?!" Curly shouted back, sitting up on his bed and chucking his pillow at the back of his door in frustration.

Tim let himself in, picked up Curly's jacket from the floor at his feet and threw it at Curly on the bed. Curly caught it and looked up at Tim questioningly, noticing the fresh bruise on his left cheek.

"Get up," he said, "we gotta go to the Kings' place."

"What?" Curly asked, not understanding why on earth two Shepard boys would head over into River King territory. The Shepard Gang and the River Kings had a lot of history of helping each other out and burying the knife in each other's backs, and right now they were backing Brumly against Tim's boys. "Why? What's goin' on?"

"I'll explain on the way," Tim responded, "let's go."

Curly shrugged his jacket back on and followed Tim downstairs, out into the front yard and to Tim's car. Once they were on the road Tim started to elaborate a little.

"George just said we had shit to discuss about Brumly, said it involved Jodie and Katie."

Curly stopped breathing for a moment. "Katie Thomas?"

"I guess," Tim answered, watching Curly from the corner of his eyes.

Curly was silent as he pondered how on earth Katie would have involved herself with Jodie King and her brothers, especially considering the last time that Jodie was a topic of discussion between he and Katie she had made it clear that she didn't trust nor like the King girl.

Something had obviously happened, something bad maybe, for Curly and Tim to be rushing toward the river suburbs.

"Who punched you?" Curly asked, remembering the bruise on the opposite side of Tim's face to the one facing him and suspecting that there might be some kind of connection.

"Brumly," Tim responded, not taking his eyes off the road ahead of them. "He mustn't have liked somethin' I said."

Curly didn't need to ask to know that Tim was talking about Rick Thomas, and he struggled to hold down the internal groan that bubbled up inside of him.

"What did you do?" Curly asked, trying not to sound too accusatory.

Tim shrugged. "I might've mentioned somethin' about the difference in decency with my boys and his, using the night his sister cracked her head as an example."

"Why would you do that?" Curly exclaimed, understanding where the conversation would have gone from there and wanting so much to bruise Tim's other cheek. With how unstable Rick had been acting in the last month or two, Curly suspected Rick might take an implication – however loose or not Tim might have made it – and run with it, and he didn't want to find out how it would affect Katie.

"'Cause the more crazy he acts the less friends he's gonna have," Tim responded, giving Curly a stern glare, "and that's the only way we're gonna beat him in this stupid war he wants."

"What happened to leavin' girls out of this shit?" Curly responded indignantly.

"You think Mike gave a shit about that when he started all of this?"

"Arnie didn't need to blow his fuckin' brains out for that," Curly countered, "and we don't need to bring his family into this to make him look nuts, he's doin' a good enough job of that himself."

Tim shrugged. "He needed a nudge. If somethin' good comes of it you'll be thankin' me."

Curly sat and stewed in the silence until they pulled up out the front of the Kings' home, just a street over from the Arkansas River. George had his head under his car bonnet and Troy was leaning against the passenger side of the car throwing a football into the air and catching it.

When Curly and Tim climbed out of Tim's car and made their way up the driveway, Troy said something they didn't hear and a second later George was wiping his hands on a rag and stretching one out to shake Tim's.

Curly glanced around as the two gang leaders greeted one another stoically. His eyes landed on Katie, who was standing up from where she'd been hugging her knees beside Jodie on the Kings' porch steps. She tried to give him a small smile, but all that registered in his mind were the blue marks around her neck.

"What the fuck," Curly muttered, his stomach churning something dark and horrible in it.

"I hope you're happy, Tim Shepard!" Jodie announced as she stormed down the porch steps and came to a stop in front of him, scowling. "You went and told Rick she was screwin' one of your boys and he almost killed her for it."

"You said what?!" Curly demanded, tearing his eyes away from Katie to turn them on his older brother.

Tim held his hands out defensively, "I didn't say she was screwin' anyone, just that a couple of my boys had looked after her when he and his buddies bailed that night at Buck's, which is the truth anyway."

"Well now he thinks we're _both_ tramps," Jodie spat at him. "If Katie hadn't come back with a bat I'd be about as black and blue as she is. Imagine the result if he'd known what was actually goin' on!"

"He'd have me to answer to," Tim responded, his eyes hard and dark, and it occurred to Curly why Tim had been in such a hurry to get there. What _was_ actually going on?

"You've gotta be kidding me," Curly growled, turning his hot gaze from Jodie to Tim. "You threw Katie and I under the bus and neglected to tell anybody you're fuckin' 'round with his girl?!"

"How the fuck did I throw _you_ under the bus?" Tim bit back, messing up his hair with a frustrated hand.

"'Cause I was the one that got her outta there!" he yelled, his fury bubbling over. "You think Rick ain't gonna ask some of the people there that night, that he ain't gonna think I'm the one sleepin' with his sister?"

Tim snorted derisively, "Really, Curly? You ain't?" Curly glared back at him for a moment, his hands balled tight into fists as he came to understand Tim's insinuation. "I got eyes, I ain't stupid," Tim said, his eyes flicking behind Curly to where Katie was still standing on the porch steps, not willing to move any closer toward Tim.

Tense silence filled the air between Curly and Tim as Curly contemplated breaking Tim's nose a fourth time.

Behind Jodie her brother, Troy, cleared his throat. "Maybe we should take this inside."

"Unless y'all are gonna fight," George added, "in which case I'd rather you don't break my shit."

"I'm leavin', give me the keys," Curly said to Tim, opening his hand out in front of him.

"You should stay," Troy interrupted, "we got gang shit to talk about. Something's gotta be done 'bout Rick."

Curly might normally have been more than happy to be included in a meeting between Tim and another gang leader, but now it didn't appeal to him at all. He didn't even want to look at his brother, much less sit in the same room as him and discuss all the ways this blow up with Rick was going to benefit his gang.

"Call Pete," Curly said to Tim, who had raised a questioning eyebrow at him. "I ain't your number two, remember?"

Tim's lips hardened into a straight line as he dug his car keys out of his pocket and dropped them into Curly's hand.

Curly turned in Katie's direction and nodded for her to follow him to Tim's car. She moved for the first time since their arrival to follow Curly back down the driveway, hesitating a moment as she passed Tim and Jodie. She made sure not to meet Tim's eyes, but felt remiss not thanking Jodie for her help against Rick. She could've very easily left Katie with him, but instead she'd defended her, maybe even saved her life.

"Thank you," Katie said quietly, feeling incredibly awkward in the new shift of feelings between the two girls compared to what they had been previously.

"Thanks back," Jodie said, reaching out and giving Katie's arm a soft squeeze before Katie moved on. She was probably still stupid and immature, and Katie doubted that she'd ever really like Jodie, but she had helped when it counted and Katie wouldn't forget it anytime soon.

Curly drove like he had the cops on his tail the whole way out of River King territory and onto Shepard turf until they were pulling up in his driveway, arriving home for the second time in a day. Had it really been only last night that he'd watched Katie fall asleep safely on the couch beside his armchair?

He wanted to say something to her as he led her into his house, something to get a response out of her because he hadn't heard a single word from her and it was unsettling, but when he tried to speak the words cemented thick in his throat. The most he could do was take her hand and pull her up the stairs with him.

They came face to face with Angela when they reached the top and Curly could tell from the widening of her eyes that she knew who Katie was.

"What the hell," Angela said, stopping mid-step to look from Curly to Katie and back at Curly, clearly trying to put a puzzle together without all the pieces.

"I'll meet you in my room," Curly said to Katie, who disappeared in the right direction as quickly as possible. "You can't go blabbin' to all of Tulsa that she's here," Curly said, holding an authority in his tone that he usually heard from their older brother.

"Why's she here?" Angela asked, glancing toward Curly's bedroom.

"I mean it, Angel. You can't say nothin'."

Angela stared at him for several long seconds, her analyzing eyes prying into every thought racing through Curly's mind. Finally, she nodded, and Curly continued on into his bedroom, closing the door behind him.

Katie was sitting on the edge of his bed facing him. Her hands were in her lap and she looked up from them when Curly crouched down before her, a hand reaching up to hold her chin still as he inspected the ring of bruises around her small throat.

"Shit," Curly muttered, the urge to stand up and punch a hole in his bedroom door coming over him.

"It's okay," Katie said so quietly she might not have said it at all. "I'm okay," she said, clearer this time and she took his hand from her chin and pulled it down to hold it in her lap.

" _None_ of this is okay," Curly responded, half expecting her to say that Rick hadn't meant it or that it wasn't a big deal. It seemed like her safety and happiness had been coming secondary to her brother's lately and any more of it was going to make Curly lose his shit in front of her.

Katie looked at him from under her eyelashes, a ghost of a smile on her lips, "I hit him with a baseball bat."

Curly didn't know why he was surprised. Of course she had hit him with a baseball bat. It wasn't the same girl sitting in front of him now that had been knocked down by Rick a month ago. Rick's changes had changed Katie, and Curly supposed he had played a part in that aswell. He wondered if she liked herself better now.

"Well," Curly said, sighing a small laugh, "I'm okay with that part."

"It kind of felt good, too," she said and then frowned. "Maybe _good_ isn't the right word for it."

"Are you hurt anywhere else?" Curly asked, lifting a hand to brush her bangs from her face so he could make sure no other part of her was harmed.

She was fine, though, nothing but the thin line of a scar on her forehead. She was surprised by how good she felt actually, considering the morning's events. Her neck was a little achy on either side where the tips of Rick's fingers had really dug into her, and her voice was only slightly raspy.

"No," she responded, the heat of Curly's fingers on the side of her face burning against the chill of her skin.

Looking into his eyes she had no idea how tomorrow or the day after was going to turn out, and the path before them seemed even more mountainous than before. What Rick had done wasn't going to stay quiet and she didn't know if she would be able to keep her relationship with Curly a secret anymore, if that was even worth doing at all.

The uncertainty of it all was too much for her that she had to clutch the front of his shirt and pull him forward to kiss her. Before their time ran out, before things became impossible between them as it was almost inevitable they would.

He kissed her back possessively and didn't argue when she scooted back on his bed and pulled him on with her. Curly couldn't help but bring his hand down from her waist and glide it up her leg to play with the top of her stockings in response to her urgent kisses and the way she was pressing herself up into him. He pulled back from her an inch, though, when her hands moved to the belt in his jeans.

Breathing heavily, he bent his forehead to rest on hers, his eyes searching her face as he said, "You sure you wanna do this right now?"

She looked up at him, her hands shaking on his belt. She knew what she was doing, but she'd never felt this kind of anticipation or excitement when she'd been half-drunk in the back of Craig Chambers' car.

Her eyes flicked down to Curly's lips and she smiled at them before leaning up and giving him her answer.

 _Most of my boys are with me, some are still out seeking glory_

 _And some I had to leave behind, my brother I'm still sorry_

Curly and Katie were woken abruptly by a loud thudding on Curly's bedroom door.

"Curly, get downstairs," Tim called out to him and Curly thanked whatever God was out there that Tim had the sense not to waltz right into his room. "Meeting."

The banging stopped and Curly rolled out of bed and quickly pulled his clothes back on. Katie watched him from where she lay under the covers in his bed. She felt a headache coming on as it dawned on her what the meeting would likely be about.

"Stay here," Curly said, glancing down at Katie and wishing he could stay holed up in his room with her instead of dealing with the shit storm brewing outside.

Katie stayed in bed a few minutes after he disappeared behind the closed bedroom door before deciding to pull her clothes on and try to hear what was going on downstairs. She had decided a couple of weeks ago not to bury her head in the sand when it came to the things her brother did and the trouble he caused, and she didn't want to start that again by waiting in Curly's room like he'd told her.

Once she was dressed again she opened Curly's bedroom door slowly and stepped quietly into the hallway. She could hear the sound of somebody speaking downstairs and her feet took her to the top of the stairs, where Tim's words drifted up from the lounge room below.

"The River Kings are cuttin' ties with Brumly," Tim was explaining to them as Katie sat uneasily on the top step, her muscles starting to burn with each movement. "We already know we have the Tigers at our back, and the Devilhawks ain't gonna step in and fight Brumly's fight for them, they're just interested in their business."

A door creaked as it opened behind Katie and she spun around to see Angela coming out of her bedroom. Their eyes met and Katie wondered if Angela would call out to the gang below. She had never spoken a word to Angela Shepard in her life, but she knew the girl was notorious for trouble.

"They're weakened right now," Tim said as Angela walked toward Katie and sat down beside her at the top of the stairs instead of continuing down them. "But we know Rick ain't lookin' to settle scores in a rumble, so we're gonna keep pushin' them. I want y'all movin' in numbers and to forget about the Brumly borders. Make yourselves known in public areas on their turf and deal with whatever problem Brumly has with it. We're gonna make them regret ever fuckin' with us and give them no other option but to rumble for ceasefire."

Katie could hear the mutters of agreement and she clearly envisioned the mass of nodding heads in the Shepards' living room. It was that easy to stir up violence in the hearts of boys.

Something else was said below, but Katie's mind was a fog. Suddenly she felt so heavy and tired, like she could sleep until this was all over.

"C'mon," Angela said, nudging Katie with her elbow and standing up, "It's best not be to caught listening in."

She disappeared back into her bedroom and Katie found her shaky feet enough to make it back into Curly's room unseen and unnoticed.

 _Soon I'll be sixty years old_

 _Will I think the world is cold?_


	12. Pressure

**Author's Note:** Thanks for the reviews, guys! Chapter two of A Day in the Life is up now and matches up to chapter two and three of Ticket to Ride, so check that out for more on Tim and Jodie :)

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from Paramore's song, Pressure. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 _ **Sunday, 23 February 1969**_

 _Tell me where our time went_

 _And if it was time well spent_

Susan arrived on the Shepards' doorstep the next morning, a concerned frown on her face from having heard from Dale about the latest developments in the war between Brumly and the Shepard Gang. She had fussed over Katie in Curly's lounge room for a good twenty minutes before turning to Curly and proceeding to argue with him about what was to be done with Katie next as though she wasn't even there.

"I don't like that," Curly shook his head against Susan's suggestion for Katie to stay with her in her sister's recently vacated room. "It's just you and your mom, what're you gonna do if Rick ends up at your door?"

"You and whatever buddies you want can take the couch every night if you have to, but she's not stayin' here." Curly opened his mouth to disagree further, but Susan cut him off, lowering her voice to say, "Do you think she really wants to stay here? I don't have a problem with Tim, Curly, but I doubt she wants to stay in the same house as her brother's enemy. Enough has happened, don't escalate it any further."

Curly shook his head angrily, knowing that she was right, but not liking the idea of Katie staying with Susan any better. He glanced at Katie, who sat in an armchair opposite Dale and was staring off into space.

"Fine," Curly conceded and not long after that Susan was helping Katie down the steps of Curly's front porch and into the back seat of Dale's car.

Katie looked worse off than she had been yesterday when they had gotten back to Curly's place. He had returned to his room after Tim's meeting to find her asleep again and he had made a conscious effort not to disturb her. She had woken up stiffer, though, her throat sore and difficult to speak through, the color of her neck having changed to a deeper, purple-flecked blue.

She walked down across his front yard as if on brittle bones and he had to reach out to give her extra support so that she wouldn't slip on the rain soaked ground.

Half an hour later she lay on Susan's couch in her lounge room, watching but not really paying attention to the game of cards Dale and Curly were playing on the coffee table in front of her while Susan made up her sister's old bed with clean sheets.

"Do you want me to call your mom?" Susan offered when she reappeared in the lounge room again.

"I'll do it," Katie said with a shake of her head.

She sounded like she had tonsillitis. Maybe her mom would think she was just sick, she thought to herself as she stood slowly and made her way into Susan's kitchen, where she picked up the receiver, dialed her home number and collapsed into a nearby chair at the kitchen table.

The phone rang and rang to the point that Katie thought her mom might have agreed to work late again, but just before Katie was about to put the phone down she heard the line pick up.

"Hello?" Shirley Thomas answered on the other end.

"Mom," Katie spoke, trying to sound as normal as possible despite the pain it took, "it's Katie."

"I was just wondering where you were," Shirley responded breezily.

"I'm at Susan's," Katie replied. She allowed a long moment to pass before adding, "I'm gonna stay her for a few nights."

Shirley laughed down the phone line, "I don't think so, honey; you've got school tomorrow. Not to mention you sound sick, you should come home and rest."

Katie thought of telling her mom it was just a cold and that she would still go to school tomorrow morning with Susan, but she didn't have the energy or heart in her to lie.

"I can't," was all she could manage, tears pricking at her eyes, wanting so much for her mom to reach through the phone and envelope her in a big hug.

"Why not?"

"Something happened with Rick and I just can't be around him for a little while."

How long, she didn't know. She had the feeling that a little while might turn into a long while or that it might be no time at all.

"What happened?" Shirley asked after a long few seconds of silence.

A couple of tears escaped and slipped down her cheeks at the thought of how disappointed and appalled her mom would be to know what her son had done to his younger sister, and the moral dilemma she would be forced to face by continuing to allow him to live with her and pay her bills out of necessity.

"Nothing you can change," Katie responded. "I'm fine, honestly. I just need some time away."

 _Cause I fear I might break_

 _And I fear I can't take it_

Just as Katie and Curly both suspected would be the case, Katie didn't feel like going to school the next day. The bruises around her neck were showing no sign of fading just yet and the last thing she wanted to deal with on top of everything else was hundreds of kids gawking at her in the halls at school.

Susan took the day off with her, and not having any other reason to go to school Dale, who had spent the night with Susan, and Curly, who had spent the night with Katie where she had fallen asleep in the lounge room the night before, lazed around the house with them, watching television and playing cards. The weather outside was miserable, raining and blowing a gale like winter was only just beginning and not about to end.

When Katie went to bed that night in Susan's sister's old room, curled up beside Curly, she felt deep inside of her the calm before the storm. Curly felt it, too, and wondered how many fights his buddies had already gotten into with Brumly in the couple of days since Tim had unleashed his boys. They fell asleep together, plagued by the same problems as every other night, neither of them remembering what it was like to fall asleep peacefully anymore.

 _I can feel the pressure_

 _It's getting closer now_

Glenn joined them at Susan's on Tuesday with a story about how he was pretty sure he'd broken Dennis McKay's nose at Jay's with a couple of Tim's other boys. They had walked in to find Dennis and another one of Rick's boys at a table near the counter and laid into them, as per Tim's orders.

"Felt good to break that fucker's nose," Glenn told them as he flicked the ash from his cigarette into the ashtray on the coffee table, "but I don't know how long we can go round beatin' them to pulps. They ain't bad fighters, some of our guys are gonna get hurt, too."

"That's why we gotta stick in groups if we're goin' out," Dale reasoned as the sound of a car engine pulled up in the driveway and cut out.

Katie glanced over the back of the couch to look out through the window at Susan's front yard. Bradley's car was in the driveway and he, Jeff and one of Rick's buddies, Jimmy, who had been jumped with Dennis just after Christmas, were getting out of the car and heading up the path to the porch.

Curly had seen them coming, too, and was out of his seat and at the front door faster than Katie could move.

"What the fuck do you think you're doin' this close to Shepard turf?" Curly demanded after swinging the front door open.

Katie came up behind him and peaked past him at Bradley, who was standing on the doorstep while Jeff and Jimmy hung back by the porch steps.

"I ain't here to fight," Bradley said simply, his jaw set hard as he looked from Curly to Katie. "I just wanna talk," he said, looking Katie in the eye as he spoke.

"Not gonna happen," Curly said, making a move to slam the door shut in his face, but Katie caught his arm and spoke.

"It's okay," she told him, trying to give Curly a reassuring look.

"No, it ain't," Curly responded, looking back at Katie. What could she possibly have to say to Bradley?

She knew she had no reason to trust Bradley after he'd tattled to Rick that she had been asking questions about the gang, but yet she felt no danger from him. He was probably the most level-headed Brumly boy she knew these days and something in her wanted to hear him out.

"Really, Curly," Katie said as stubbornly as she could muster, "If I need you I'll yell."

Why did she have to be so fucking frustrating? His only choices were to leave her alone to speak with Bradley or to punch him, and though the latter would make Curly much happier he decided to refrain – Katie had witnessed too much violence in the past few days.

"Fine," he finally said, his eyes meeting Bradley's. "I'll be watchin' from the window."

He left them alone and Katie stepped out onto the front porch with Bradley, pulling down the sleeves of the sweater she had borrowed from Susan, trying to protect her hands from the cold.

Jeff and Jimmy both crossed their arms over their chests at the sight of Katie and after a few moments of hard stares Jimmy turned and stalked back to Bradley's car. Jeff followed a moment later, but not before he gave Katie a nod and a look that she thought might have been apologetic.

Bradley took a seat on the porch step and Katie followed his lead and sat down beside him, hugging her knees to her chest. She looked out at the street before them, trying to ignore Bradley's eyes on her.

"People were sayin' Rick hurt you pretty bad," Bradley said when he finally spoke. "He just told us to mind our own business, so we didn't know whether to believe it or not."

"So that's why you're here?" Katie asked, glancing at him quickly and looking back out at the street, unable to meet his eyes for more than a split-second. She wondered what Rick's defense would be when they went back to their gang with news that he had indeed tried to strangle his little sister.

"Partly. We wanted to know if it was true," he shook his head darkly, "obviously it is." He looked at her, but she kept her eyes well trained on the street. "He called you a traitor. Most of the guys are pretty mad that you're with _them_ now."

"Curly, Dale and Glenn are the only ones who've looked out for me and been honest with me these last few months," Katie bit at him defensively. "I'm not choosing sides, Brad. I don't care about your stupid gangs. I'm here with them because they're my _friends_."

Bradley scowled at her last word, but bit his tongue and said nothing in response for some minutes. "Did I play a part in this?" he asked next, staring at the bruises on the side of her neck, though Katie frowned, not sure what he meant. "I told Rick you were askin' gang questions," he added by way of explanation.

"It wasn't over that," she answered quickly and looked over at the lounge room window where Curly was sitting and watching them, just like he had said he would.

Bradley followed her gaze and said, "I didn't tell him you skipped school with Curly that day. I know he thinks you and one of the Shepards are goin' 'round and I want you to know I didn't put that seed in his head. I only told him about the questions 'cause I thought he might just tell you and save me havin' to fight with you."

"You knew I skipped school with him?" Katie asked, looking at him in shock.

"I saw you leave with him," he answered, "and you weren't at school the rest of the day."

"Right," Katie said, fitting the puzzle together in her head. "I forgot that was before you stopped coming to school altogether. Selling drugs is a better use of your time now, huh?"

"I was pissed you were runnin' off with Shepard and you were pissed I told Rick," Bradley responded with a sigh. "Jeff already dropped out and the Kings are alright, but I don't consider them buddies. I was never gonna go to college anyway."

Katie stared at him, astounded. She hadn't realized until now that there had been a part of her hoping that Bradley wasn't selling drugs like the rest of the boys.

"So you admit it?" she asked, anger seething inside of her. "You're selling that stuff, too."

Bradley shrugged. "I gotta make money somehow."

Katie snorted contemptuously, pushing the disappointment down and rising to her feet. "There are plenty of other ways to make money. Try getting a job, Bradley," she said before turning and going back inside.

 _Now that I'm losing hope_

 _And there's nothing else to show_

Wednesday was another boring day at Susan's, though it was laced with a bit of tension. The group was getting restless. Four days in Susan's house with terrible weather raging outside was putting everybody on edge. Susan and Dale were snapping at each other, Dale and Glenn had bickered most of the afternoon, and Katie felt like Curly was still sour with her for agreeing to speak with Bradley the day before despite the fact that she had given him a word for word replay when she'd come back inside.

On Wednesday night, Susan's mom went to bed early with a tickle in her throat and the next morning she woke too sick to go to work. Susan hadn't made her mom aware that she and her friends hadn't been going to school all week and so the group had to leave early in the morning, supposedly headed for the school.

"I think I should go," Susan said guiltily as they drove around aimlessly, arguing with one another over where to spend their day off school. "Can you drop me off?" she asked Dale, who was driving them around in his car. He nodded and Susan gave Katie a pointed look. "You can't hide forever; you should come back, too. All of you should."

"I'm not hiding," Katie responded, telling herself she just didn't have any interest in going back to school, but she knew deep down that her reluctance was because of the bruises and the looks they would earn her.

Some kind of story about Rick hurting her was already going around; she didn't want to see the pity in peoples' eyes when they saw it was true.

Curly lent back in the back seat and wrapped an arm around Katie's shoulders. "Ain't like any of us is applyin' for college."

"You ain't gonna have any friends there," Glenn teased.

"Pam and Janet will be there," Susan argued, naming a couple of girls she and Katie shared a couple of classes with.

Dale drove Susan to the school and as Katie stared out the window at the large school building she was glad that she hadn't decided to get out of the car with Susan. The place was too big with too many people.

Curly and Glenn both wanted to play a few games of pool, so after grabbing snacks from a convenience store to satiate their breakfast appetites, the four of them set out for the pool hall. Katie figured the chances of running into somebody she knew were low, with the pool hall being on Shepard turf and most people her age being at school.

Curly won the first two games against Glenn, hustling him out of a couple of dollars, before turning his cue over to Dale so he could sit with Katie where she had been watching the games from off to the side.

He had noticed a bit of her usual spark missing since the weekend and he hated seeing her staring off at something like nothing else was going on around her, the way she was now. Alot had happened to her and it had made her stronger in alot of ways, but it was also enough to break her if she let it, and Curly didn't want that to happen if there was anything he could do about it.

As he sat down in the seat beside Katie's he noticed the doors at the front of the pool hall open and a couple of Tigers walk in, Craig Chambers among them. "Great," Curly muttered, not particularly in the mood to deal with Craig's shit.

Katie turned around and looked to see what Curly was talking about. She turned back to Curly when her eyes connected with Craig's, sighing exasperatedly. She had made eye contact; he would be heading over to them any second now.

"Try to ignore whatever stupid shit he says," Curly told her, squeezing her hand as Craig approached the pool table Dale and Glenn were playing at.

"Imagine my luck drivin' past and seein' your car out the front, Roberts," Craig said to Dale once he was within earshot. "Y'all are just the people I've been wantin' to catch up with. Lots of shit is goin' round and you know I love a good story."

"There ain't much to know," Glenn shrugged his shoulders at Craig, glancing warily at Katie.

Craig laughed. "The bruises 'round her neck beg to differ," he said, turning his attention to Katie and she felt her face flare red under his gaze. "Looks like the River Kings weren't exaggerating for once."

"Fuck off, Chambers," Curly said, his voice low and gravelly. He didn't like the way his eyes had looked her up and down knowing that a year or so ago it had been Craig with Katie, not Curly.

Craig's eyes flicked to Curly and narrowed at him for a few moments before tossing his head back and bursting out laughing. His buddies over by the candy bar glanced over at them.

"Well I guess that answers my next question," Craig said, smirking at Curly and Katie where they sat together, Curly's grip on Katie's hand tightening as he fought to stay calm. "It makes sense now that Rick throttled her for sleepin' with _you_."

"Give it a rest, man," Glenn said as Curly let go of Katie and got to his feet, his fists clenched up into balls.

Katie tried to grab Curly's hand back, but he shook free of her easily and started for Craig, who turned his attention from Glenn back to Curly and gave him a confused sort of look that suggested he didn't realize Curly was about to punch him in the face.

"What's your problem, Shepard?" He asked as Curly closed the distance between them and threw his fist into Craig's left cheekbone.

The impact of the punch sent Craig staggering into the side of the pool table, clutching his face where Curly had hit him and looking dazed. He brought his hand away from his face to reveal blood trickling down his cheek from where Curly's tough knuckles had split his skin. Craig looked down at the blood on his hand and back up at Curly before rushing toward Curly and throwing him off his feet.

Katie flew up from her seat and raced for where the two boys had landed on the ground, but Dale caught her by the arm and pulled her back as Glenn and Craig's buddies rushed in to pull Craig off of Curly, but not before Craig landed a solid blow to Curly's nose.

"What the fuck is wrong with you, Shepard?!" Craig exclaimed, shaking out the fist he'd hit Curly with. "We're meant to be on the same side, man."

"Fuck you," Curly spat at him, blood pouring from his nose as Glenn pulled him to his feet.

"C'mon," Dale said to Katie, walking away and pulling her along with him, "we're leaving," he told Glenn and Curly and after a few more insults were shouted between Curly and Craig they were piling back into Dale's car.

"I need a new shirt," Curly grumbled from where he sat beside Katie in the backseat, pulling the black shirt he was wearing and dripping blood onto up over his head and pressing it against his nose to soak up the blood still gushing. His nose was broken. He had no doubt about that – he had heard it crunch under Craig's fist.

"We'll stop at your place for a while," Dale responded, taking a corner and heading for the Shepard house.

When they arrived, Dale and Glenn waited outside on the front porch while Katie and Curly headed inside to get him a change of shirt. Curly hoped he'd be able to dodge Tim, who he knew was home because his car was parked out in the driveway, but he had no such luck when Tim came out of the kitchen to find Katie leading Curly toward the stairs while Curly held his balled up t-shirt against his face.

"What the fuck happened to you?" Tim demanded, stopping them in their tracks.

Curly glanced at Katie and told her to go upstairs and grab him a shirt from his drawers and she followed his instruction, happy to get out from under Tim's scrutiny. Once she was gone, Curly pulled the shirt down from his nose and let his brother see the blood smeared on his face and the slight bend that Craig had punched into his nose.

"You look more like me every day," Tim laughed. "Brumly?"

"Nah," Curly responded, balking at the comment about their similar looks. "Craig Chambers."

Tim's face changed instantly. "You've gotta be kiddin' me, Curly," he groaned.

"He's a moron," Curly replied by way of explanation, "I never fuckin' liked him."

"It ain't about who you fuckin' like and don't like!" Tim yelled, his eyes shooting daggers at Curly. "It's about who's got your back and who doesn't. I can't believe I gave you free reign to beat the shit out of any Brumly boy you come across and you go and pick a fight with our fuckin' ally instead. Whose side are you on, Curly?!"

"Shut the fuck up!" Curly shouted back with a ferocity he didn't think Tim had ever seen from him before. "Don't you dare try and make me look like some kind of traitor. I've never been anything but loyal to this gang, to _you_!"

"You got a funny way of showin' it, kid," Tim spat back. "You fight the ally and fuck the enemy. What do you think that makes you look like to everybody else?"

"You didn't seem bothered by me and Katie when you were usin' it to stir up shit with Brumly, and now you've got a problem?"

"My problem is you're constantly doin' the opposite of what you should be doin'. You should be backing me on this and instead you're fightin' me every step of the way."

"What the hell do you expect, Tim? I ain't gonna follow you blindly like a damn dog," he yelled, tossing his shirt at the armchair to Tim's left and pointing an accusatory finger in his face. "This whole mess with Katie and Jodie would never have happened if you had've just kept your mouth shut, but instead you went and threw Katie under the bus _knowing_ she would probably be hurt. I _can't_ be okay with that! How the fuck am I supposed to be right now?!"

Curly sucked in air through his mouth, his nose throbbing terribly. He glanced around him, his bravery fading by the second as he waited for Tim's response, but it didn't come. His brother stood still, staring at him like he'd never seen him before.

Curly heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Katie coming down the stairs, her eyes downcast and nervous. Curly didn't doubt she'd heard every word, Dale and Glenn had probably heard, too. He looked back at Tim, who looked at Katie and back at Curly before finally speaking.

"Get outta here," Tim said gruffly, "and stay away from the Tigers if you can't be trusted with 'em."

He walked back into the kitchen, leaving Curly and Katie alone in the lounge room. In Curly's mind, every other time he'd raised his voice at Tim in the past he'd wound up with an endless lecture, a clip around the back of the head or even a solid punch in the gut once or twice. In their whole lives Tim had never accepted Curly pushing back at him like he just had.

The only explanation that made any sense was that Tim had understood for the first time ever with Curly that _he_ was in the wrong, and Curly couldn't help but feel he'd earned a little bit of power over Tim because of it.

 _Some things I'll never know_

 _And I had to let them go_


	13. Wild Things

**Author's Note:** Over 3,000 hits on this fic - thank you, guys! Chapter three of A Day in the Life is up now and matches up to chapter four of this fic, so check that out for more on Tim and Jodie :)

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from Alessia Cara's song, Wild Things. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 _ **Saturday, 1 March 1969**_

 _Find table space to say your social graces_

 _Bow your heads, they're pious here, but you and I, we're pioneers_

 _We make our own rules, our own room, no bias here_

Curly drove Katie home to her house in the heart of Brumly land, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel impatiently as he anticipated what would be waiting for them. Katie had agreed that they would turn around and come back another time if they got to her house and Rick's car was out on the street or in the driveway, but she hoped that scenario wouldn't play out. She was sick of borrowing clothes from Susan.

Things between Brumly and the Shepard gang hadn't gotten any better in the week since Rick had attacked Katie and Jodie. If anything, things had gotten worse with the daily brawls the Shepard boys were getting into with the guys from Brumly. There was a couple of incidences of cracked ribs and black eyes among the guys Curly saw yesterday evening at the gang meeting Tim called, but they had the advantage of having allies in the Tiber Street Tigers and now the River Kings. It was safe to say the Brumly boys hadn't fared as well as the Shepards in these fights before they were broken up by the sound of cop sirens coming for them or the security at a public spot.

Katie knew that things had to get worse before they got better and that the plan was to back Rick into a corner until he had no choice but to agree to a rumble and, if he lost, possibly new terms for peace – or at least common respect for the gang borders when selling narcotics – but it didn't change the facts. She was going to be living with Susan until things with Rick got better, until she felt even a skerrick of safety in his presence, and if that was going to be another week or two at the very least then Katie was going to need some clothes. She couldn't keep borrowing Susan's anymore; together they had worn her whole wardrobe in a week.

Curly slowed down as he turned onto Katie's street and both of them sat up a little straighter in their seats. The car cruised closer to Katie's house and she let out a great, big sigh of relief when she saw her driveway empty. Curly pulled up on the side of the street outside her house, thinking Glenn might be a bit pissed if they had to abandon his car in Katie's driveway because Rick came home and blocked the car's rear.

The house was silent when Katie turned the doorknob and walked inside, Curly following close behind her. Neither of them said a word as they ascended the stairs and headed into her bedroom, their ears straining the whole way for the sound of human activity anywhere else in the house. There was nothing. The house was vacant. Empty. Just like Katie felt as she packed some of her clothes from her drawers into a bag.

"You alright?" Curly asked from where he was leaning against her window frame, keeping watch on the front of the house.

"Yeah," Katie responded as she picked up a textbook from her desk and packed that, too. "We should probably go back to school on Monday."

"I don't think I'll ever amount to much, with or without school, but that place sure does kill the time," Curly said with a shrug, deciding he would rather go to school than spend his days as bored as he, Katie and the others had spent the past week skipping school.

Katie understood what he meant, but it got her thinking about Curly's future instead of her own as she finished shoving her bag full of clothes and followed him back out of the house and into Glenn's car. She knew he had no plans after graduation, just like her so far, but something inside of her doubted that Curly would end up getting a job like she figured she would do. She wasn't aware of Tim having a legitimate job, but she assumed he was still able to help his mom with money like Rick did with theirs.

Curly would likely continue doing what he knew and what he'd been taught, but Katie wondered how much of a strain she had put on that future and where she might come to stand in it. Would he become like Bradley, constantly unable to answer questions about what he had been doing or where he had been because he'd been taking care of gang-related business? Would Tim even allow Curly to join him in the family money-making profession?

She had overheard their fight on Thursday after Curly had gotten his nose broken by Craig Chambers at the pool hall. She had heard Tim insinuate Curly was a traitor for dating her and fighting Craig, who as a Tiger was meant to be Curly's ally. Had Curly's problem with Craig last week not been a reaction of something he had said about Katie?

It seemed like she kept getting in the middle, regardless of whether she meant to or not, and she couldn't help noticing that being with her made Curly's life about as complicated as being with him made hers.

"I think we should stop," Katie breathed after they had been on the road a couple of minutes.

"The car?" Curly asked, glancing at her uncertainly, thinking that maybe she was about to be sick or something.

"No," she responded, air entering her lungs in quick, short breaths. "This. Us."

Curly pulled the car over on the side of the road anyway. He killed the engine and turned in his seat to face Katie. A few strands of her blonde hair had fallen loose from her ponytail and were stuck to the sides of her pale and clammy face.

"What're you talkin' about?" he asked her, leaning forward and searching her face for something that made sense.

"I'm just hurting you, Curly," she explained. "I'm making problems for you where there doesn't need to be any."

Curly frowned, still not following her train of thought. "What problems?"

"I heard you fighting with Tim the other day."

"So?" Curly asked with a shrug of his shoulders. She had been upstairs getting him a clean shirt to replace the one stained with blood from his nose when Tim had torn into him for getting into a fight with a Tiger. He hadn't doubted that she overheard them.

"It's clear your own brother doesn't think he can trust you," she said, "and that's because of _me_. You being with me puts you in a bad position with your own family."

"And bein' with me puts you in a bad position with yours," Curly countered. "And screw Tim and his trust. I'm his brother; he should have more faith in me than that. This is what I want," he paused before adding, "is it still what you want?"

Katie gave him a small smile. "This is basically the only good thing I have left," she answered, though Curly noticed it wasn't the answer he'd asked for.

"We've made it this far through all the bullshit," he said, leaning forward and pressing his forehead against hers, looking her in the eyes and turning the moment between them intimate. "I ain't callin' it quits this close to the end."

Katie stared into Curly's dark blue eyes thinking that his words sounded an awful lot like something she was simultaneously excited about and afraid of.

"Do you love me?" she whispered, wanting confirmation that everything that was going on was worth it.

"Ain't it obvious?" Curly asked, grinning at her before pressing his lips to hers.

It wasn't the answer she was asking for, but she kissed him back anyway.

 _I lose my balance on these eggshells_

 _You tell me to tread_

 _I'd rather be a wild one instead_

On Monday Katie and Curly caught a ride to school with Susan and Dale, meeting up with Glenn in the parking lot for the first time in over a week like it was really only yesterday. It was good to be back, but Katie felt better about having had the previous week off school every time somebody shot a gossipy glance at her neck. The bruises were lighter now, yellowing and fading, and she would bet anything she owned that the looks she was getting would have been much worse last week when the bruises were dark and fresh.

The school week passed quickly and Katie felt herself easily falling back into the structure of it, even if it was more difficult than ever for her to focus in class. She thought alot about her mom. She spoke to her on the phone on Wednesday night, but she had to end the phone call abruptly before she could let her sobs out into her hands. She missed her. She hadn't thought the distance between them would affect her much because she was used to her mom not being around very often, but in reality it just made her want her mom even more.

"Can you take me to see my mom?" Katie asked Curly on Friday afternoon as they walked out of school and down to the parking lot.

Her bruises were almost unnoticeable now and even more difficult to see with her hair down the way it was today. She thought she would be able to hide them long enough for a quick visit to see her mom.

Curly gave Katie a wary look. "I dunno if it's too smart an idea you goin' home again," he told her, hating that she wasn't safe to see her own mom in her own home. "Rick not bein' home when we went there at the weekend was luck alone."

"I know," Katie responded, holding her hand out for Curly as they walked and taking a moment to bask in the ease and comfort his hand holding hers gave her. "I meant at work. It's a diner downtown."

"I can take you," Glenn interrupted, looking back at them from where he walked just a few steps ahead, clearly still within hearing range. "Curly and I can keep an eye out for Brumly while you speak to your mom."

Katie looked at Curly hopefully and he nodded, unable to say no after he had heard her crying the other night. He was glad to have a bit of backup from Glenn if he should need it, though. Brumly weren't just invading Shepard turf to make their sales; they'd also been spotted on the streets downtown, mixing with the Devilhawks, who Tim had narrowed down as the only possible suppliers to Brumly.

Katie shut out Curly and Glenn's banter as they drove, anticipation welling up inside of her as they got closer to the diner her mom worked at. She was afraid she would end up in tears again and look like a fool in front of everybody her mom worked with and her customers. She didn't even know if her mom would be able to take a break, but she figured the drive would be worth it regardless of how long she would be able to see her mom.

Katie directed Glenn through the streets downtown until they were parked on the side of the road out the front of the diner. Curly and Glenn got out of the car and lit up cigarettes to smoke while they waited out the front for Katie, who entered the diner alone and spotted her mom right away.

Katie approached the front counter, where Shirley Thomas was pouring a mug of coffee for a customer, and Katie laughed at the shock on her mom's face when she looked up to see Katie standing there.

"What're you doing here?" Shirley asked, handing the full mug to her customer before taking off her apron and walking out from behind the counter, telling another waitress on the way that she was taking her break now.

"I wanted to see you," Katie said as her mom enveloped her in a big hug.

"I've wanted to see you for almost a fortnight now," Shirley said as she took Katie's wrist and pulled her toward a nearby booth. Once they were both sat down, Shirley lent back in her booth seat and looked Katie up and down. Katie lent forward and rested her chin on the back of her hand, hoping that from this angle her mom wouldn't notice her neck, or that she would dismiss the small bruises as love-bites at least.

"I know you won't tell me over the phone," Shirley said, "but I've gotta ask again; what is happening between you and Rick? All I've managed to get out of him is somethin' about you getting a boyfriend."

Katie rolled her eyes. "It's not as simple as that."

"Please," Shirley groaned, "just tell me what is going on. The both of you are killing me. Is this boyfriend treating you badly? Is that why Rick's got a problem?"

"No!" Katie rushed to reassure her. "Rick has a problem with Curly because he has a problem with Curly's brother that goes further back than Curly and I do, that's for sure."

Shirley narrowed her eyes at Katie, probably looking for any trace of a lie, but Katie had spoken the truth and was positive it showed on her face. After a long moment Shirley finally sighed and looked down at her hands where they rested on the table in front of her.

"I'm worried about Rick," she confided and Katie couldn't bring herself to lie and tell her he was fine.

"I've been worried for a while," Katie said instead.

"He's never home, and I don't know where he goes, but it's not to work. He won't eat, he won't talk, he won't sleep," Shirley continued, dragging a hand through her hair. "He lost his best friend, I understand that, but this feels like more than just grief."

Her mom wasn't as out of the loop as Katie had thought. She was noticing things that Katie had noticed, too. It was likely Rick wasn't showing as much to his mom as he had to Katie, but he had obviously changed enough for her mom to be concerned, too. She thought of telling Shirley where the money Rick gave her for bills really came from – surely Shirley wondered about that since she knew he wasn't going to work anymore. She couldn't bring herself to tell her, though. She didn't want to put her mom in that kind of predicament; accepting money made from selling drugs that were rapidly becoming a big problem for their country. It was one thing to turn a blind eye to money made from a few stolen car parts or from the till of a busy shop, it was another to ignore that the money was coming from the sale of a product that destroyed lives. Shirley's son was destroying lives. He was destroying his own, too.

"He'll be alright," Katie said, her voice hollow. "He'll come 'round."

Shirley looked back up at Katie and gave her a small, hopeful smile before leaning back again looking out at the street through the windows at the front of the diner. "That's him on the left, huh?"

Katie looked out at Curly and Glenn, who were leaning against Glenn's car talking and smoking.

"How did you know?"

"His hair matches his name," Shirley responded, "and he's been watching you like a hawk this whole time." Katie felt a blush creep across her cheeks. "Can I meet him?"

Katie hesitated only a moment before nodding and heading out of the diner to get him.

"You ready?" Curly asked, his cigarette held between his lips as he turned toward the car, ready to get in.

"No," Katie answered, suddenly feeling nervous. The guys on the east side of Tulsa weren't exactly the kind you brought home to your parents, or the kind that _wanted_ to meet parents. "My mom asked to meet you, do you mind?"

Curly glanced at Glenn who said he was fine for a few minutes and would yell if any trouble came his way. Curly followed Katie back inside, feeling like he might be about to be eaten. He didn't know how much Katie's mom knew about what was going on, but he knew that Katie couldn't sleep in her own home because her mom wouldn't get rid of Rick no matter the circumstances, and that didn't sound like too good of a mom to him.

"Hi, Curly," Shirley said as Katie and Curly approached, standing up to shake his hand and offer him Katie's seat. "Katie, would you mind telling Lou-Anne that I'll just be another minute?"

Katie glanced back at the front counter where Lou-Anne was covering the front counter for Shirley. She shot Curly an apologetic look before leaving him alone with her mom.

"Katie's brother seems to have reason to think that you're gonna hurt her," Shirley said once Katie was out of earshot, all niceties gone. "I don't need to worry about that, do I?"

Her voice was low and serious, and her eyes – the same kind of hazel as Katie's – were narrowed at him suspiciously. Curly had to bite back a remark that Rick had already hurt Katie more than Curly ever could, and instead tried to smile politely, though he was long out of practice.

"Rick may not like me," he said, leaving out the fact that the feeling was mutual, "but I ain't intending to hurt your daughter."

Shirley gave him a tight smile and glanced behind him at where Katie was stuck listening to one of Lou-Ann's many stories. "She's a good girl, she doesn't need any trouble."

Curly couldn't help it, he laughed. "Are you tryin' to say _I'm_ trouble for her?"

"You could be all sorts of trouble for her, honey," Shirley responded knowingly before flashing Katie a smile as she made her way back to the table.

"Sorry," Katie apologized sheepishly, "Lou's a talker."

"No matter," Shirley responded, standing up from her seat, "My minute's up now, I better get back to it."

"Okay," Katie replied forlornly as Shirley pulled her in for another hug. She wished she could stay there forever, her mom's arms around her and her head buried in the hair at Shirley's shoulder. "I love you," she whispered before Shirley pulled away.

She couldn't remember the last time she had told her mom she loved her, but it felt important to tell her now.

 _Don't wanna hang around the in crowd_

 _The cool kids aren't cool to me_

 _They're not cooler than we are_

On Saturday afternoon, Katie and Curly walked in to Jay's with Susan and Dale to meet up with Glenn and a couple of Shepard boys who had just gotten out of the cooler that morning after being picked up last weekend for fighting in public with another couple of Brumly boys. Katie had agreed to leaving Susan's place for something other than school very reluctantly, but she had given in finally when Curly reiterated for the hundredth time that she needed to get out and that he and his buddies weren't going to let anything happen to her if trouble were to arise.

When they arrived it wasn't too crowded, the lunch-time rush having died down a little already. Glenn was there waiting for them, sitting at a table with Harry Reger and Ralph Arnolds, who looked up from their discussion as the others approached them. Curly and Dale greeted the two guys, who Katie thought must've been a couple of years older than her, like old friends and introduced Katie and Susan to them as their girls. Katie didn't miss the scepticism in their eyes when they looked her up and down before nodding their cautious acceptance to Curly. Curly's gang didn't trust Katie, and it dawned on her as Dale moved another table over for all of them to fit around that the gang didn't trust Curly by association.

As Katie sat down in a chair beside Curly she glanced around the rest of the diner. A couple of girls she knew from school sat on the other side and a few Tigers, including Craig Chambers, sat closer to the front counter. Craig looked up from his fries when Katie's gaze landed on him and a long moment of staring passed before Craig, shaking his head slightly, looked back down at his food.

Half an hour passed as Katie sat and listened to the banter between Curly, Dale and Glenn and the newly released Shepard boys, feeling for all the world like she was invisible. The war between their gang and Rick's came up several times, including a recounting of the fight Harry and Ralph had gotten into last weekend with a few more of Rick's boys.

Eventually everybody got up to order some food from the counter, leaving Katie and Curly alone to watch the tables.

"You don't look like you're havin' much fun," Curly said, trying not to sound annoyed, but failing at keeping the edge out of his voice, "do you wanna leave?"

Katie turned to look at Curly and began to nod when the front door over Curly's shoulder caught her eye, or more specifically what caught her eye was _who_ was coming in through the front door.

Rick was sauntering into the diner with Jimmy and two other buddies he had gone to school with, and his eyes were locked onto Katie's as he headed for the table she sat at. Curly glanced behind him to see what had caught Katie's attention and the warm rush of adrenaline started through him as he sat up straighter, his hand moving from the top of the table in front of him to the outline of his switchblade in his jeans pocket.

Rick's buddies moved on to a table further past Katie and Curly, but Rick stopped by their table and fell into one of the chairs across from them. His eyes examined Katie for a moment before moving on to Curly, narrowing menacingly at him. Curly refused to wither beneath Rick's eyes, though, and he glared back just as nastily. The tension was thick enough to cut with a knife and it compelled Katie to break it and try to remove herself and Curly from the situation as quickly as possible.

"We were just leaving," she said, avoiding Rick's eyes and moving to get up from her seat.

"I wanna talk," Rick responded and Katie froze half way out of her chair.

"What could you possibly have to say to me after everything you've done?" Katie hissed at him as Curly pulled his blade from his pocket, flicking it open and holding it ready underneath the table.

Curly glanced over to where his buddies and Susan were ordering from the front counter to find Glenn, Dale, Harry and Ralph watching the exchange between Katie and Rick, ready to jump in if Curly needed their help. He could also see Rick's buddies sitting apprehensively at the table they'd just chosen, their eyes observing Curly's table, too. Curly didn't know how he was going to get out of their without a fight and cussed himself out inwardly for pushing Katie to come out with him. She would still be safe if they had stayed at home.

"Everything I've done?" Rick asked and he looked like he might laugh if his jaw weren't clenched so tight. "I just thought your little boyfriend would wanna run along to big brother and let him know I'm wavin' the white flag." Rick smirked nastily at Curly, whose grip on his blade never loosened. "You tell him to come find me when he wants to talk rules for a rumble," he told Curly as Katie glanced between the two warily.

"Like she said," Curly spoke, tipping his head at Katie slightly, "We were just leavin'. We'll be sure to pass the message on."

Rick glanced at Katie and then back to Curly. "I want a word to my sister," he said and when Curly made no move to leave Katie with him, he added, "alone."

"Not gonna happen," Curly responded matter of factly and Katie could almost see her brother's fuse quickly burning behind his eyes.

She tried to remember what he used to look like, before the bags under his eyes and the hard, mean structure of his face took over his sweet features, but all she could see in his mind's eye was the craze that overtook him when he choked her and how he had pushed her out of his way in front of a crowd of people, sending her flying into a table and knocking her unconscious. She could hear the hatred in his words after Mike's funeral and the cold silence he had subjected her to for weeks. He had hurt her so much in the past couple of months and she wanted to hurt him back.

"You know, I couldn't see Mom for two weeks because my throat was bruised all the way 'round," Katie spat at Rick, setting her hands down on the table and leaning in closer to him, her every word a poison aimed to strike at his heart. "That's twice now I've lied to her about what you've done to me," she shook her head, disgusted. "I guess I'm too much like her, right?" she continued, her words intending to remind him of the day after he had knocked her down at Buck's. "Well the apple doesn't fall far from the tree and I'd rather take after Mom than Dad like you do."

They were fighting words and Curly got to his feet, not bothering to hide his blade from view as he pulled Katie away from the table. Rick's nostrils flared at the mention of their father and he scowled at her as he leapt to his feet and reached across the table for Katie but just came up short.

"Don't you fuckin' touch her, Thomas," Curly growled, lifting his blade high enough that if he were to rush forward the knife would slice into Rick's chest.

"Are you really gonna choose their side after everything they've done to us?" Rick shouted, his words directed at Katie though his eyes never moved from the blade pointed at him. "You're my fuckin' sister, Katie, you're meant to have my back!"

"And you're meant to protect me," Katie hissed back, mortified by the number of customers that had stopped eating to watch her family drama unfold, "not shove me up against a wall and choke me," she said, moving forward so his ears wouldn't miss the red hot anger on her tongue, but her advance was stopped by Curly's arm stretched up in front of her to block her.

Curly's eyes found his buddies' and he inclined his head to the front door and they began moving around the edge of the diner. With his arm outstretched in front of her, Katie had no choice but to back away when he did, but her eyes never left her brother's. Months worth of emotions played out over his face and she imagined her face reflected similarly. There was still so much he had done that she just didn't understand and perhaps her likening him to their dad was too harsh.

He had changed, yes, but he had to still have some small piece of himself left. There had to be more there than just anger and hatred. He had to still be her brother, in some way or another, and as Susan and the Shepard boys met she and Curly at the front door, Katie wished – not for the first time – that her brother would come back to her. Curly finally felt comfortable to lower his blade once they were all together and they left Jay's in search of Tim.

Maybe Curly would be right and things would get better. Maybe Rick would get better. Maybe.

 _We will carve our place into time and space_

 _We will find our way, or we'll make a way_


	14. Break Even

**Author's Note:** Second last chapter... And since it's so short, and the next chapter is so short, too, I've uploaded them together. So this chapter is _almost_ the end...

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from The Script's song, Break Even. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 _ **Saturday, 22 March 1969**_

 _I'm still alive, but I'm barely breathing_

 _Just prayed to a God that I don't believe in_

The last two weeks had been reminiscent of a time Katie and Curly had almost forgotten despite their best attempts to hold on to it. Curly and Tim had been hopeful yet dubious when Curly had passed on the news that Rick was calling for a ceasefire, but he had stuck to his word for the full fortnight that Tim had later agreed upon.

They all had a fortnight for their existing injuries to heal and for those who had been picked up by the fuzz to be released. George and Troy King chose not to rumble, having already dealt with Rick personally for what he had done to Jodie in the weeks after he had hit their sister and strangled his own sister. The alliance between the River Kings and Brumly ended with Rick and Jodie's relationship. And the Tigers were happy to watch things unfold from the sidelines. Curly personally thought that the Tigers had been enjoying watching things blow up for the Shepards in the last couple of months; it had certainly taken some of the heat away from their own problems with Brumly.

The fortnight brought with it peace and what Katie thought was false hope that things were going to be okay after all. She prayed that she was wrong and that the heavy stone in her gut was a product of her own negative imaginings and not a warning of what was still to come, but she didn't think that much would change whether the two gangs rumbled or not. Not for her at least. Something might change for the gangs, but for Katie the damage was already done. She no longer recognised her own brother. She couldn't speak to her own mother. What she'd had left of her family after her dad had walked away was in pieces now and she didn't know where she would even beginning fixing things if she ever did get the chance.

Katie hadn't spoken to Rick since their run-in at Jay's two weeks ago and as she lay with Curly on her bed at Susan's place she had a terrible feeling that she was in the wrong place, with the wrong person.

"Don't worry," Curly told her, his dark blue eyes reading her hazel ones so easily. "It'll be fine."

"What if it's not?" she asked.

"It will be," he said as he grabbed her left wrist to check the time on her watch. "It's just bare fists; the worst anyone will probably get is a few cracked ribs."

Curly groaned as he rolled away from Katie and got to his feet, ready to go out to Dale and Glenn, who would be waiting for him in the lounge room by now, and head for the agreed place for the rumble several blocks away.

"Promise me you'll be careful," she said, crawling over to sit on the edge of the bed and watch him shrug his jacket on.

Curly resisted the urge to roll his eyes at her. He couldn't exactly blame her for behaving like a girl, could he? He liked it most of the time, especially the perfume she wore and the feel of her slender body pushed up against his...

"It'll be fine," Curly told her again, shoving the thoughts from his head and locking them away for a better time than right before a rumble.

Katie gave him a small appreciative smile, before sheepishly adding, "Is it too much to ask for you to make sure Rick's fine, too?"

Curly frowned at Katie as he popped the collar on his jacket. "You know he's the one we're fightin', right?"

"I know, but if it's just bare fists then he shouldn't get too badly hurt," she said and Curly's silence spoke volumes to her for the damage he planned to do tonight.

Curly had watched Rick push his sister flying and crack her head, he had seen the bruises around her throat after he had choked her and he'd listened to her cry too many times while Rick had escaped relatively repercussion-free. Curly planned to change that tonight.

"I gotta go," he said finally, his eyes lingering on Katie's still, unsure of what he was waiting for.

"Okay," she said, though her mouth re-opened as if she wanted to say something else, but she remained silent and Curly left a moment later feeling like he'd swallowed something hard and heavy.

 _They say bad things happen for a reason_

 _But no wise words gonna stop the bleeding_

Curly, Dale and Glenn were the last of their gang to arrive in the empty lot several blocks away from Susan's house, but they still had time to wait for a couple last stragglers from Brumly. The sun had set by now, but the glare Rick was shooting Curly was unmistakeable in the light streaming down from the lampposts around the lot, and when the two gangs came together to face one another, Rick spat on the ground at Curly's feet before glowering at Tim.

"I'm not sure whether I wanna fuck you or your brother up more, Shepard," Rick said to him, his nostrils flaring the same way Katie's did when she was angry.

"Quit talkin' shit, Thomas," Tim responded steely, "we're here to fight, and I'm here to fight you."

Rick looked between Tim and Curly, sizing the two of them up, and the tension in the air was so thick that nobody dared move until Rick pulled a closed fist back and lunged for Tim.

Movement and shouts erupted all around Curly as he tore his eyes from Tim defending himself just in time for him to spot and block a blow from Bradley Simons. Curly twisted around Bradley's punch and landed a solid hit to the side of his already bruised face, knocking him a couple of steps away. He recovered quickly, though, and came at Curly with a punch that slipped past Curly's lazy guard and split his lip open. Curly tasted blood as he stumbled back and spit it out on the grass before feinting to the left and thumping Bradley in the ribs as a crack of thunder rumbled in the distance, masking the sound of Bradley's ribs cracking, too. Bradley dropped to the ground, winded, and Curly glanced around for the next oncoming attack.

Everybody seemed caught up in their own fight with almost an even number of opponents on either side. Not far away Tim had just knocked a tooth out of Rick's mouth, but before Curly could take over for his brother, Dale backed out in front of Curly just before being tackled to the ground by Jeff Griffiths. Jeff slammed Dale into the ground and Curly bolted forward, reaching them just as Jeff grasped Dale by the front of his shirt to pull him up a little and slam himback down into the dirt again.

Curly had no time to think – otherwise he might have opted to pull Jeff off of his buddy with his hands instead – and instead of pulling Jeff off his buddy like he might have otherwise opted for, he swung a leg forward until his foot connected with Jeff's face and sent him soaring through the air behind him.

Curly helped Dale to his feet as Dale struggled to breathe air into his lungs again after being knocked on his back so forcefully. Dale nodded Curly a frantic thanks before they both moved on to the next fight to win. Curly looked around again for Tim and Rick and found them in the middle of the fray where Rick was puling himself up off the ground from a blow Curly hadn't seen Tim throw at him. Tim was distracted by one of Rick's boys, Jimmy, coming at him with his fists out in front of him, and Curly took that as his chance to go in for Rick.

Rick was moving back toward where Tim was now readying himself for Jimmy's attack and Curly moved forward into his path. Primal rage flashed across Rick's face the moment his eyes landed on Curly and his lips curled back to show his teeth in a malicious grin. Rick ran at Curly, catching him around the middle and intending to tackle him, but Curly twisted and Rick lost his footing, sending him sprawling onto the grass a few feet away. He righted himself as Curly advanced on him, but it wasn't enough time to protect himself from the punch that Curly threw next that surely snapped his jaw. It didn't stop Rick, though, who countered Curly's punch with one of his own to Curly's head, splitting the skin on his cheekbone just under his left eye. They threw a few more punches at one another – most of them landing – for a couple of rounds until Curly landed a good jab in Rick's solar plexus and he dropped like a bag of bricks.

Curly didn't think Rick would be getting back up after that and quickly looked around again to see how his buddies were faring. All around him everybody was bloody, but there were more Brumly boys on the ground than Shepard boys and the rain seemed to be holding out just long enough for them to win this thing.

Curly's eyes found Tim, who had just knocked Jimmy flying and begun to assess the damage so far like Curly was, when something akin to a war cry split the air around them. Curly looked back to see Rick stumbling up onto his feet again, the butt of a handgun grasped firmly in his right hand.

Time seemed to slow dramatically, though not long enough for Curly to do anything but stand and wait for the bullet to hit him as a gunshot cracked louder than thunder and deafened all those in the lot around them. He blinked for what he thought might be the last time and wondered if the sound of the gunshot had travelled all the way to Susan's place. Right before he had left her he had thought Katie might've been about to tell him she loved him. He thought that she did, whether she said it or not, but now he would never really know...

His eyes opened again, though, and Rick was no longer in front of him. The grunts and yells had died down and most around him had stopped fighting except for Tim and Rick, who rolled around on the ground, wrestling over something held tightly between the two. Curly ran toward them, horror gripping him as he realised his brother was struggling for his grasp on the gun that had been aimed at Curly just a moment before, and he rushed to pull Rick off of Tim as Rick gained the upper hand and rolled on top of Tim.

Before Curly could reach them, though, another gunshot – slightly muffled this time – echoed through the night and shook the stars from the sky. They fell down to the earth in glistening raindrops as Rick jerked sideways and collapsed beside Tim in the dirt. The two enemies lay side by side, staring up into the heavens as they opened for them, chests heaving, one of them drawing their final breaths.

 _Now I'm tryna make sense of what little remains_

 _'Cause you left me with no love and honor to my name_


	15. Ticket to Ride

**Author's Note:** And here it is! The end of Ticket to Ride! Sorry it's a sad one ): But I have a sequel in the works already so keep an eye out for that in the near future. Also, don't forget to check out Tim and Jodie's side of things in A Day in the Life. And lastly, thank you to everybody who has read, reviewed, favourited, alerted, this story. All of your love and feedback has been so encouraging and made me so happy, so THANK YOU!

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout, as well as the title of this fic, are from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 _ **Sunday, 30 March 1969**_

 _She said that living with me is bringing her down_

 _For she would never be free when I was around_

Katie had spent the past week in her bedroom, much like her mother, leaving her Aunt Gloria, who had arrived last Monday, to fend off the friends and acquaintances who stopped by to give their condolences and a dish of food that Katie had been forced to eat a couple of times when Gloria wasn't busy tending to Katie's mom.

She had left her bedroom only to go to the bathroom and to check on her mom a couple of times. Each time Shirley Thomas lay motionless in her own bed, staring up at the roof, either unaware or refusing to acknowledge that other people were around her.

On the morning of the funeral, Katie listened to her mom's sister try to convince her to get out of bed for two full hours before giving up and moving down the hall to bang on Katie's door instead.

"I can't be the only family member going to this funeral," Gloria told Katie as she entered her room. "You've got to get up." She sounded almost as tired as Katie felt. "Please."

Katie pulled herself out of bed and went through the motions, grateful to have her aunt to brush her hair because she didn't think she would have the energy to do that after dressing herself aswell. Gloria brushed Katie's long bangs back off her face and though her eyebrows rose when she saw the thin scar on Katie's forehead, she didn't ask any questions.

She let Gloria lead her down the stairs and out into the front yard toward her car, thinking that the last time she and Rick were under that roof together he had almost killed her. She still couldn't decide on whether she pushed him to that point or not.

The funeral was short, sweet and all they could pay for after Rick had left them to survive off of only Shirley's income and what money he left behind in that stupid sock in his top drawer. The faces of the mourners blurred into one as they each took their turn to offer their pity or pull Katie's stiff body into a hug before scuttling off as if her grief was contagious and they might catch it if they lingered too long. And all the while that night played out over and over in her head like it had done all week long.

She had heard the first gunshot and there was no stopping her as she bolted from the couch she'd been sharing with Susan, out the front door and down the street. Another gunshot shattered the night a minute later and Katie felt as though her feet never hit the ground the whole way there, the whole time praying to God that someone she loved hadn't been shot, and she loved so many of those involved.

She had run until her chest was bursting for oxygen and then she ran some more until she made it to the lot, where red and blue police lights lit up the area. Only a few boys remained of the few dozen that Katie knew would have been there rumbling before everything had gone so obviously wrong, but the only one she recognised was Curly, dripping wet with blood and rain and listening to something a cop was saying. Katie had stumbled toward Curly breathlessly and he had scooped her up into his arms when he'd noticed her. She allowed herself to sob her relief for only a moment before pulling away, still panting, and wordlessly asking him who it had been.

He had looked on the verge of tears as he tried to pull her back where she belonged, where she would be safe from the heartbreak that was just over his shoulder, but she had seen it before he could block her view. He'd tried to pull her back and told her she didn't want to see it, but she _did_.

She needed to see it, to see him and know that every worry she'd been having about the future and how Rick played into it had been pointless. He was dead. And she didn't know how it had happened, just that afterward she had been dragged off of him kicking and screaming - just wanting one more minute with him – so that the paramedics could take his body away.

It played over and over like a record on loop and each time she thought she remembered something new, like the heart-wrenching _sorry_ 's from Curly as she struggled against his grip or a glimpse of Tim as the police took him away in the back of a squad car, but she couldn't be sure her imagination wasn't playing tricks on her.

Eventually Gloria started guiding Katie back to the car and despite the loneliness she had felt among all those people at the graveyard she was surprised to find it was even lonelier in the space between her and her aunt in the car. They drove back across the city in silence, passing all the places Katie wished she could burn down just to be rid of the reminders. Tulsa was still so alive with the memory of two boys who were best friends and died within just a few months of one another, and it physically hurt to the point that Gloria had to pull the car over to let Katie out so that she could breathe.

She spilled out onto the sidewalk, gasping for air that didn't reek of blood the way it had the day Mike had died and the night Rick had died.

It took ten minutes of Gloria rubbing her back and her head resting between her knees before Katie finally felt any semblance of calm, and when she stood up to get back into the car she noticed where they were. The turn off for Curly's street was just up ahead, so close she could walk there in just a couple of minutes.

She hadn't seen Curly since that night. Just the top of his head at her front door every day since.

She had selfishly thought more than once in the past week that even less was stopping her from being with Curly now, with her brother being dead and his brother being behind bars because of it. She had even missed Curly's warm presence after spending the past month tucked in beside him most nights, but she hadn't had the guts to make the journey from her bedroom to her front door this week.

She didn't know how she could face him, or how anything was meant to work now that things had gone so irreversibly wrong. Mostly, though, she was afraid that she would look into his face and see his brother. Or even worse, that she might look into his eyes and see reflected there the image of her brother lying dead in the rain.

 _She's got a ticket to ride_

 _But she don't care_


End file.
